by Kate Elliott
Hard on his heels came shouts from below and a sudden flurry of swords clashing. Vasha’s guards leapt forward and hauled Vasha to his feet, pinning his arms behind him. At once, four guardsmen went out the door. Janos got to his feet and grabbed his sword.
“Tie his hands,” he said, nodding toward Vasha. “Belos, get my mother, and my wife.”
Lord Belos hurried out. From outside the door, guards shouted in Yossian. Janos fumbled for his boots, but Captain Maros backed away from the door, shoved the prince’s boots and brigandine into the arms of a soldier, and jerked the prince toward the door.
“No time,” he said, and something about the river, too quickly for Vasha to understand. Dragged along behind, Vasha caught a glimpse of men fighting at the base of the stairs, on the level below. His heart leapt. Jaran men, some auxiliaries stabbing with short swords, fought with grim intensity below, caught against a cul-de-sac in the stone fortress.
“This way,” said Captain Maros. Swearing, Janos followed, down a different stair, deeper into the stone walls. Belos caught up with them. His gambeson was ripped and blood stained his right shoulder.
“The women are something,” he said. Vasha heard another melee off to his left. A handful of guardsman joined them; their leader babbled to Captain Maros, and in the resulting pause, while Maros and Janos and the new captain threw words back and forth at each other, Vasha’s guards trussed his arms up behind him.
Silence fell over the group, Janos and Vasha and perhaps twenty men. “My wife?” Janos asked.
“Gone,” Belos said distinctly. “The other woman, your mother, the guards… asleep… not wake them.”
A shout carried in to them, huddling here where stairway and wall split into three passageways. Bells began to ring from the town, and two horns blew almost in unison, farther away, from the town walls. A tide of noise hit, carried outward from some new conflagration.
“This way.” Captain Maros gestured to the stair that led downward. Three soldiers headed down, but Janos did not move. He stared up, back the way they had come. For now, it was silent up there. As an afterthought, he tugged on one boot, then the other.
Moments later, two of the soldiers returned. “…river stair…blocked… jaran…”
“…fight our way…town…” said Captain Maros.
“Princess Katherine,” said Janos quietly.
“Too far…across the courtyard…dangerous.”
Swords rang in the corridors above them. Men shouted, drowning out the distant swell of sound that came from the town itself. Among the shouts Vasha heard khush words: “Left, go left. This way. No, pull back.”
“We must go, my prince,” said Captain Maros desperately, tugging on Prince Janos’s arm. “They are inside the castle and the town.”
For one more moment, timeless, Janos did not budge, still looking up, toward the solar, toward his bedchamber.
“We have been betrayed,” he said. At last he moved, and his men formed a silent shield around him as they headed on out, seeking a safe passage, seeking escape.
Rusudani saw Bakhtiian off as a queen sees off her champion. Torn between fury and fear, Tess mounted up beside Ilya. He accepted her presence beside him without a word, as he would with any of his soldiers. She felt frozen inside. People in captivity formed strange bonds and stranger alliances, and for the first time she realized that Rusudani offered Ilya more than she could, an entire kingdom.
“Oh, God, Tess,” she muttered under her breath, “you fool.”
One of the captains called the advance, and they rode forward, slowly into the night. Ahead, she heard fighting, sounds familiar to her now: the clash of swords, the rising howl of the town coming awake to its peril, horns and bells and the roar of fighting and shouting and sobbing and the sheer grief of a people newly torn by war.
The ditch was now interrupted by bridges of hastily piled-up dirt, and they had to wait while they funneled through the two bridges over the moat. Tess eyed the walls uneasily, but already the fighting moved away from them, farther into town, and as their party moved under the gates and into the eerily deserted streets of the town she realized that she did not need to worry about Ilya getting caught in a melee. However much he might fulminate, his guard would see to it that he remained far from the real battle. They did not intend to lose him again, even if they had to let him assuage his wrath by pretending to let him join in the assault.
She did not speak to him. She was afraid to. He seemed so strange, so distant. His eye roved restlessly, catching on a torch bobbing along a farther portion of wall, skimming over a darkened doorway, touching her, marking her, and then away, back toward camp and then up, again, as always, to the pale sheen of the castle itself, thrust up into the heavens. He was mumbling something, but it sounded like nonsense to her: angels and burning lights and a sword from heaven. Abruptly he stopped speaking. After that he remained silent while his guard pressed cautiously forward through the empty, winding streets and they heard the fighting recede before them. A roof caught fire, another.
A group of riders burst through a narrow alley and were upon them. Tess raised her saber, instinctively pressing her horse out in front of Ilya, to protect him. But his guard fought with relentless concentration, cutting the khaja soldiers to pieces before them. A few arrows fell, spent, across her horse’s withers, and once she held, across a distance, the staring eyes of a man just stabbed, before he fell from his horse. Otherwise, she and Ilya were caught in a shifting eddy, shielded, untouched.
Of the town’s inhabitants, she saw no one. Every house was shut tight, every shutter sealed. For the most part, the riders ignored the houses except when a stray arrow flight came too close; then six of them would split off to go look for the culprit. In this way they wound into the heart of the town.
A new clot of riders clattered up a main avenue, plumes bobbing.
It was Gennady Berezin. “We tried to close the castle off, but the prince has escaped into the town with some of his men.”
“Seal off the walls,” said Ilya instantly. “Make a ring of riders. We’ll surround him and drive him in toward the center. He must not escape.”
Riders scattered through the dark streets. Auxiliaries came forward, dismounted and carrying lanterns. Pace by slow pace, winding through streets empty of life, leaving knots of guards where the line had to be broken, they pressed forward, meeting another line, calling out in the darkness because there was no light for signaling with flags.
Swords rang off to the right, a brutal but brief clash that receded into silence. Hooves clipped on cobblestones. A crack of light rimmed a shuttered window, vanishing as whatever people hiding in the house blew out their candle. Tess dismounted and led both her horse and Ilya’s. Someone called for lanterns, and soon their way was lit again. Down an oddly straight avenue Tess saw more lights, torches, lanterns, bobbing like fireflies. A new group of jaran joined up with them, and their line deepened. She felt them like a mass around her, powerful, unyielding, implacable. Bridles rang. Leather armor squeaked. She could almost hear breath like the exhalation and inhalation of a single monstrous predator hunting down its prey.
Stars glimmered above in the rents between clouds. The air was cold and damp. Distant, like the noise of the river, she heard the sustained clash of swords. Behind, each street was left behind in silence. Once, turning round, she saw four dark figures, misshapen by bundles thrown over their backs, slip from a house and head, quickly, furtively, for the distant gates. Two riders broke off to go after them, but after a moment, Tess saw, they let them go. The important quarry lay in the center.
They closed at last around the central marketplace, a grassy commons now ringed with torches and lanterns and blackened by bodies strewn like so much refuse in toward the very center of the square, where the town’s well rested. Trained by many a birbas, the jaran soldiers had let no one through. Now they had herded what remained of the khaja prince’s guard into a corral made up of the jaran army itself. She heard fighting
still from the castle, but it seemed contained within the castle walls.
The last melee dissolved as the jaran riders, alerted to Bakhtiian’s presence, pulled back, and the khaja soldiers formed up around the well. Tess assumed that Prince Janos himself stood within that ring of guards, shielded by his men just as the jaran shielded Ilya. A few diffuse flights of arrows sprayed out from the khaja ranks, but they did no damage.
Ilya raised his right hand. Beside him, Nikita called out a command, and a sudden fierce stream of arrows poured into the khaja formation. Men fell and were dragged back, their place taken by others. At the very center, men threw up shields, protecting the prince.
“Advance,” murmured Ilya, so low that Tess barely caught it.
Pouring arrow fire before them, the jaran soldiers advanced. The khaja soldiers fought as fiercely as cornered animals. No quarter given. None received. They fought, all of them, in desperate silence except for grunts and shouts of command and the occasional scream of a wounded horse. The ring of torchlight gave it all an unearthly quality, shimmering and insubstantial.
Ilya held back from the fighting, but even if he had wanted to go forward, he was hemmed in by a stubborn and immovable line of his own guard, who still had no intention of letting him near the fighting. There came from the direction of the castle a new tumult of riders, and the guard braced themselves, but it was Vladimir and what was left of his men, those who had broken in through the river stair.
“Ilya! Aunt Tess!”
Katerina rode at the front, mounted awkwardly because of her khaja garb, a gown hiked up to reveal trousers underneath.
“Thank God, my child,” cried Tess, and went to hug her, but Katerina would not dismount. She stared at the knot of bitter fighting, the slowly shrinking circle as the jaran pressed farther in, as the khaja, one by one, died.
“Where is Vasha?” Katya demanded. “Is he here?” She turned in her saddle to look at the woman behind her, a khaja woman, Tess saw. A moment later Tess recognized her, the interpreter, but she could not recall her name.
“Where is Vasha?” Tess asked.
Vladimir shook his head. “Not in the tower where he was imprisoned before. We have taken the castle and searched most of it. Dead, hiding…” He lifted a hand. “Or there, with the prince.”
“Break off the fighting,” said Ilya, although Tess hadn’t realized he’d even been listening.
It was not so easily done, not with horses caught in tight quarters, not with corpses and wounded thrown as obstacles across the ground. Perhaps they took as many casualties pulling back as they had coming in, Tess thought, but by now they had done as much damage as they needed to.
As much, perhaps more, if it was true that Vasha was still a captive. It might be too late for Vasha. Certainly it was too late for most of the khaja soldiers. There were, at most, two dozen left standing.
Ilya urged his horse forward. He had been forced to wear guards’ armor, a plumed helmet and a gaudy surcoat, quite unlike the plain rider’s armor he preferred. Tess stuck beside him, and Katya, foolish unarmored Katya, rode up next to her, refusing to go back even when Tess yelled at her. Still, Katya was in some measure protected by Nikita and Vladi and Mikhail, who surrounded her.
“Tell them,” said Ilya, “that I wish to speak with Prince Janos.”
“I will go,” said Katerina, and rode out in front of the ranks, unshielded, unafraid.
“Katerina! Come back!”
She ignored him. Strangely, a quiet fell over the square, as if her presence was what everyone had been waiting for, as if her presence would make all the difference. She reined in her horse halfway between the jaran line and the khaja soldiers. She had, Tess saw now, a bow and a quiver of arrows strapped to her back, gleaned from some unknown place.
“Where is my cousin Vassily Kireyevsky?” she called out. Lanterns flickered. No reply came. A breath of air swirled past, rustling the tunics of the dead.
Ilya kicked his horse forward suddenly. Cursing, Tess went after him. She wondered if she was the only person in this entire tableau who was terrified. Everyone else seemed preternaturally composed, as if they all knew their destined parts, and she alone did not know hers.
The outer ring of khaja soldiers did not move, but movement swirled in the middle. Two shields parted to reveal a man, an ordinary enough man except that, as he took off his helm, Tess realized that he wore no armor, that he was, in fact, only half clothed in hose and shirt, like a man who had been driven untimely from his bed. He was looking, not at Ilya, but at Katerina. Beside him, arms caught behind his back, stood a disheveled Vasha. He stood straight, without fear, and Tess felt a sharp stab of love for him, admiring his courage.
“I claim my right to take his life,” said Ilya as he reined in beside Katya.
Katya lifted a hand. Her voice was hard. “Cousin, he is mine. I claim his life, as is my right.”
What right? Tess wondered. To her astonishment, Ilya hesitated and, with an infinitesimal nod, gave in.
“What do you mean to do with him?” Ilya asked.
“If he will give up Vasha, then I will make a bargain with him.” Katya unsheathed her bow as calmly as if she meant to take archery practice. “If my hand does not kill him, then none will.”
When they hit a group of jaran fighters defending the forecourt gate, Vasha knew that he would probably die. He hunkered down, keeping his head protected as well as he could, tucked in toward his right shoulder. He fixed his gaze on his boots. Better not to see the blow that took him. Bodies shoved past him, and he was borne first forward and then back by the tide of the sortie. Going out, coming back in, suddenly surging out and they were through, pounding over the drawbridge and down into the shelter of the town’s winding streets and narrow alleys. He ran with them because a man prodded him with the haft of his sword, and because to halt was to be trampled or killed on the spot. After all, Vasha reasoned, as long as he was alive, he was still alive. He could still escape.
“Put on this helm, my lord.” A soldier handed a battered helmet to Prince Janos. The strap was broken, sheared through, but he stuck it on his head anyway. A flight of arrows pattered over them from the castle walls, but whoever was shooting was shooting into the dark, and although one man cursed, he was only grazed in the arm.
“No lights,” said Captain Maros. A soldier extinguished the last torch.
In darkness, they forged forward. They were not looking for a glorious death. These grim men wanted to get their prince out of here, away. Vasha understood irony. Janos’s soldiers were as devoted to him as Ilya’s were devoted to their Bakhtiian. It was the ultimate test of a prince’s stature, that his men would rather die than betray or abandon him, even in such hopeless circumstances. Yet someone had betrayed them.
Janos whispered to Lord Belos, and Vasha heard Lady Jadranka’s name twice, and that of Rusudani only once, but said with a bitter anger.
“This way.” Captain Maros led them into a pitch-black alley. Vasha stumbled over the rough stones. His guard grabbed his elbow and heaved him up.
“Shall I kill him, my lord?” asked the soldier.
“No,” said Janos.
“Hsst.” Captain Maros halted them. “Riders, that way. We’ll go left.”
They went left, down a broader street, and Captain Maros tried to find a route up to the rooftops but the first man to the roof was shot, suddenly, an arrow piercing him from several houses on, where torches illuminated a pitched roof and several dark forms.
“Cursed by the moon,” said Captain Maros, for the clouds had uncovered the crescent moon, and there was just enough light to see figures, however shadowy they might appear against the night sky. Farther, toward the town wall, smoke rose, licked upward by flames.
“Riders,” hissed another soldier, one of the pair bringing up the rear. “Behind us.”
“We must take shelter in one of the houses,” said Lord Belos.
“We’ll be trapped,” said Captain Maros.
�
�We must go forward,” said Janos. “We must break free of the town. At the docks we can get a boat.” So it was decided.
They slanted right and almost ran into a line of jaran auxiliaries. Leaving four men to fend them off, they ducked into a narrow lane, fetid with garbage and urine. Vasha’s shoulder scraped along the wooden frames of houses, burning his skin under his shirt until blood welled up. Once they ran into a second group of Janos’s men, who related how they had escaped from the town gates, words Vasha could not follow.
While they talked, Vasha inched sideways, toward a break in the alley, but a soldier nudged him with the flat of his sword. These weren’t careless men.
Left with nothing else to do, Vasha cocked his head and listened. Somewhere, out there, the jaran army fought its way into the town. He wondered if they had rescued Katerina. He wondered about his father. Was Ilya still alive? Was it safer for him, chained down in the dungeons? Or would he simply be an easy target for a guard seeking a last act of revenge? Had Stefan died with him? What had happened to Rusudani?
There was, for a time, a restless surging noise all about them, the inconstant swell and ebb of battle, but it faded away, as if the battle had gone elsewhere or ceased altogether. More men joined them as they edged farther into town, but these were poorly-armored townsmen. He caught snatches of conversation in frantic Yossian, not enough to place it together. Evidently most of the townspeople had barricaded themselves inside their homes, trusting to their wood and stone tents to grant them safety from attack. What else could they do?
“Move left,” said Captain Maros. “No. Back. Riders ahead.”
Slowly, Vasha realized that it was unlikely, if so many jaran soldiers infested this town, that they would glimpse but not engage so many successive troops of jaran soldiers.
“If we can get through the marketplace,” said Lord Belos hopefully, “then there are only four streets to the dock gates.”
In one direction, always, the way was free. They were being driven. Vasha lifted his head and watched the others, watched Janos, his face dim in the night, watched Captain Maros, whose pale surcoat moved like a ghost through the dark streets, hugging the walls, seeking safe passage. They did not suspect.
