by Henry Thomas
“Let us away.”
He nodded and they left the boy staring after them for a pace. He pocketed the coin and made to pick up his barrow again and Joth stopped watching and turned his attention back to Eilyth. She was looking at him nervously. Joth did not like it any more than she did. “That silver will keep his tongue in his mouth.”
“You mean he will not betray us?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think he won’t.” Joth’s answer rang weak in his own ears, but he had to hope that the boy would value the coin he had been tossed more than his prejudices, whatever they may be. He met Eilyth’s eyes.
“I also think that he won’t tell.” She broke away from his look at last.
They rode on at a brisk pace, their horses jogging up the street and moving through the pedestrians and handcarts, the wagons and teams. The foot traffic grew more and more dense as they neared the looming walls of Borsford. The half-timbered buildings on either side of the street jumbled closer and closer together and gave Joth the feeling that they were leaning like two drunken men on both sides over the road about to fall in on each other. Street vendors with carts selling hot food hawked their wares at a crossroad. The passersby were not gawking at them at all now, though the occasional carter would furrow his brow at their lack of stirrups, and one lad pointed at Eilyth’s hair and commented loudly on the fact that she was not sitting a lady’s saddle with both of her legs to one side. Joth ignored it as best he could, but when he looked at Eilyth he could see that she was growing more and more worried by the moment. It was unnerving for her being in the crowded street, he could feel it coming off of her in waves of fear and nervousness. He knew Aila felt it too. The gray mare tossed her head and shied at every creaking cart and shrieking hawker that they passed. It would do no good to give in to fear, it would not serve the situation in any beneficial way, Joth told himself. He tried to think of something he could say, some comforting words, but all that came out was, “What do you think of Oestern cities, lady?”
Eilyth laughed thinly. “I will tell you when this is behind us.”
They passed under the wall through the high arch of the gate, murder holes and portcullis and an iron door sandwiched between the walls forming a ten-foot thick corridor, their knees touching in the claustrophobic passage. It was only wide enough to allow one wagon to pass, a defensive measure to ensure only a double rank of fighting men were able to rush through in case the gate were ever breached. There were sally ports on either side of the portcullis to allow the defenders to take care of the divided attackers, or to ambush invaders by hiding men within the walls. Joth had learned these tactics while garrisoned at Immerdale. They had drilled and drilled multiple scenarios as attackers and besieged alike. From the drills Joth took away one thing: it was much easier to defend a fortress than to attack one, but one had to know how and use good tactics, or be overwhelmed. Some of the older soldiers in the force he lived with were veterans of the wars between the rebel lords and the Magistry that had taken place before Joth had memories. They had told the younger men that defenders were often cruelly butchered if the attackers had spent a long siege, and they said the attackers would always break the defense if they kept attacking but the cost of life was high on the attacking side. It seemed that there were always enough men for the purpose; he knew because he was one of them by way of his service to the Magistry, where he was taught to do as he was told. At the least he was not in the garrison of the town guard of Borsford. Same hat, different color, thought Joth. They were all soldiers, servants to their orders. Wat always told him he had a knack for getting into bad situations, and when he first asked him why, Wat had replied, “You joined the First Army of the Magistry, you must be in a dire fix!”
They were made to check their horses to a walk as the crowd was funneled into the choking gatehouse causeway, and they slowed to a stop as a wagon’s cargo was checked at the gates. The farmer with the wagon being held for inspection threw his hands into the air in an exasperated gesture and muttered curses as he fished in a pouch for some coins and handed them to the toll man at the gate. Joth heard a snippet of their exchange.
“Just doing our duty, Tyllard.”
“You’re always doing your duty—that’s the problem!” The farmer tied his pouch to his belt and flicked his reins at the team who started the lumbering wagon moving forward again. “And I’m always paying your duties left and right!”
“It’s the law,” the guardsman said tiredly, raising his eyebrows.
“Why do we stop here?” Eilyth asked.
He wondered if she was overwhelmed with the day’s events and all of the sights and sounds; the clamour and chaos of the town making her experience a brief, terse moment of weakness.
“Lady, are you all right?”
“No. I like this place not. This is a place to die.”
She was looking at all of the portals, the murder holes and arrow slits.
“We’ll be out of here in no time and on our way,” Joth reassured her.
“The sooner the better.”
They were struggling through the line and queued up for what felt like ages, but slowly they made it closer to the end of the gatehouse tunnel that opened out into the heart of Borsford. The buildings were different here. They were all stone and their roofs were of slate. Fireproof, mused Joth. No thatch would be allowed behind the curtain walls of the town for fear of them being burnt too easily if besieged. It had given rise to a middling class of folk called “slaters” who could afford the expense of slating their roofs, but now it denoted people who could afford to buy houses and operate mercantile businesses within the walls of a city. One had to have a charter to do so. In the old days the lord of the town had to grant it, but now it fell to the Magistry to answer such requests. Part of his duty while garrisoned at Immerdale had been to collect taxes from the slaters every season. Many of them had grown as rich as lords, some even wealthier. Not a one of them had liked to pay their taxes, Joth recalled.
The line began to move forward again. Joth began to feel anxious as he and Eilyth drew closer to the inspectors and the toll man. He wondered if they were looking out for them, if they had already received word somehow. Nothing short of Goblincraft could have given them that, Joth decided. No, they had beaten news of their clash with the town guard at the Cloth of Gold, and no one could have gotten here from there ahead of them. Still, his heart thumped in his chest and his palms were slick with sweat as he passed under the scrutiny of the gate crew. They regarded he and Eilyth briefly, and were on their way to waving them through until the toll man’s eyes went wide at Eilyth’s gold adorned braid peeking out from the cowl of her silver gray cloak. He stood up from his stool and pointed the quill he was holding straight at Eilyth and opened his mouth, and Joth’s heart sank as his mind raced. Eilyth threw a furtive glance at him. Joth gripped the hilt of his sword under the cloak and fought down the panic welling up inside him.
Not here, he thought. This could end badly. There would be crossbows behind those arrow slits and murder holes, and bored men with idle hands itching to squeeze levers and to have a story to tell at the tavern after their watches ended. Maybe they could charge through and surprise the guards. Once they were through the curtain wall they would be safer. Perhaps it had been a mistake to enter the town at all.
Before the quill-pointing toll man could form words, a commotion from behind them in the line stole the attention away from he and Eilyth. A handcart had overturned behind them and spilt its contents onto the pavers. A tall lanky lad was cursing at a boy with an overturned wheelbarrow as he slipped and fell over himself trying to load his cabbages and root vegetables back into the handcart.
The toll man shifted his gaze to the overturned produce and the two guards went to assist the lad with the gathering of his goods, as it had given the already restive queue a completely disordered sense of chaos. Joth caught the lad’s eyes for a second and re
alized the wheelbarrow boy was the same whom he had paid with a silver just a few minutes before. The lad gave Joth a conspiratorial grin and winked at him big as he pleased then went back to nodding apologetically and loading cabbages back onto the handcart of the lanky fellow.
“Let’s go,” Joth whispered to Eilyth.
They moved forward through the gate and into Borsford proper. They waited until they rounded a corner before urging their horses up into a fast trot along a narrow side street that shot them straight north through the town. They skirted along the western wall of Borsford. When they spied the gate and saw that it was relatively sparsely trafficked, Joth nodded to Eilyth and they made their way outside of the walls again and rode around the outside of the western curtain wall and its gray stones until they came to the north side of the city. They gazed down upon a broad staging plain just east of the narrow causeway ramp that led down from the northern wall gate that had been cleared of all trees and leveled. There, amidst several small cranes and other rope and pulley machinery for the loading and unloading of wares, sat several airships of differing shapes and sizes, hovering magically above the ground where they were tethered and tied off. Brightly hued tubular mainsails and lateral sails in contrasting colors gleaming in the morning sun, animals and other heraldic devices adorning their bowsprits, it was a wonderful spectacle to behold the airships at rest in the Skyharbor of Borsford.
Eilyth made a noise like the sharp intake of breath. There was amazement in her eyes as she pointed to the floating ships. “How do they fly there?”
“Magic, lady. Goblincraft.”
She looked at Joth quizzically and then set off down the hill toward the plain where the ships lay tethered. Joth followed. They had made the Skyharbor and were traveling down the broad avenue that was formed between ships and ‘docks’ of goods for transport and trade when Eilyth stopped her mount and turned her head back to the town, listening.
“Joth,” she said sharply, her eyes bearing concern.
He heard it too.
Bells were ringing out.
They had raised the alarm in Borsford.
Eleven
Uhlmet forced the pasty gruel down his throat and grimaced at its foul taste, gagging as the wind shifted and the paralyzing stench of his captors invaded his nostrils and sent an involuntary shiver down his spine. It must have been several days since the monsters had caught him and trundled him away. First, they had bound him painfully with a barbed rope and carted him off in their strange carriage drawn by a team of what seemed to be oversized rats with eerie red glowing eyes and scaly tails. The rats were muzzled with bronze cages that kept their snapping jaws of black razor-like teeth away from their cruel whip-bearing masters, the strange blue-skinned humanoids with reptilian features whose stench paralyzed him at first but now only made him convulse when the wind shifted in the darkness of the inner subterranean world within which he found himself a captive.
They spoke Oestersh, or at least a form of it. Rhael had listened to them chattering incoherently as he was carted along the underground road, the wheels rumbling loudly and the blue light from their strange Goblincraft lanterns bathing the caverns and illuminating the alien world inside the earth, allowing his battered eyes to see. The pain still burned in his body, his bones ached and his head throbbed incessantly, but his captors had given him a drink that they claimed caused the body to heal. It had burned his throat like fire and sent his head spinning the first time the scaly three-fingered hands had forced his mouth open and rammed the bronze funnel down his throat and poured the pale milk like liquid into his mouth, but it had made his pain subside. It also made him sleep soon after he imbibed it. At first Rhael had thought he might be able to open the door and manipulate the energies of his magics to burn the creatures from existence when he had quaffed the bitter potion, but sleep had washed over him almost immediately and he felt himself fall away from where the door lay in his mind, unopened. Initially, he had resisted the attempts made by the strange creatures—the Kuilbolts, as he had learned they were called—but now he welcomed the bitter milk they offered. He had been growing less sleepy after repeated doses, and he was certain that eventually his powerful mind would master the potion. He would soon throw open the door that lay closed, and he would make the beasts writhe in pain while he sizzled them slowly. Then he would eat the foul things, or better yet feed them to the massive rodents. They would fuss over him and stroke him like a prize as they administered the medicine, talking about what a price he would fetch, and proclaiming the joy he would bring to their masters.
“Look at how it regards us! It has depth!” Iztklish was its name. It was taller and broader than the others.
“Depth, yess. Yess.” Krilshk was short and bone thin, possessing extraordinary strength. He pitched Rhael’s head back and forced his jaws open with his cold hands.
Iztklish inserted the beaten bronze funnel and Krilshk held it in place as they poured the liquid down his throat. Rhael only resisted a little as he felt the burning liquid fill his body with its discomfiting heat, spasming involuntarily.
“It grows stronger now, see?”
“Yess, it waxes. Its matter heals.”
Iztklish pulled the funnel from Rhael’s mouth rapidly and hung it from the hook on his pale colored leather belt. He wiped his three-fingered hands down the front of his leather jerkin and its shiny closely knit bronze plates. They all wore those jerkins sewn with plates.
“Across the water, and soon we will bring it before the Masters.”
A slithering shrieking noise and Rhael realized that Krilshk was laughing, or something approximating mirth. They are excited to have captured me, Rhael understood, they are happy. They drew close to each other and rapidly shot their snubbed snouts into either side of the other’s neck in what Rhael had interpreted as some form of dance of victory or self-satisfied display. Rhael was growing drowsy even now, but he willed himself to cling to consciousness, and he sought to open the door as he concentrated on keeping awake. Let me open it and burn them, let me do this one thing, Rhael thought. But the door remained closed. Iztklish and Krilshk finished their celebration and turned back to the others excitedly. Rhael’s vision was starting to swim and blur.
He was accustomed to this feeling and he knew that his time was running short. Soon his consciousness would fade and he would be lost to the realm of sleep. He sought again for the door and was dimly aware of the barbed rope tickling him with pain at his wrists where he was bound. Not the physical world, Rhael thought, I want the metaphysical realm! He grasped at the door but his hands were clumsy and the handle seemed to lose any corporeal substance as he swiped at it. Had he drifted off for a moment? The world was a fog. He was being carried past the cart by the short reptilian beings. When he glanced down he saw water all around him and a stone dock beneath the feet of his porters. Was it stone or was it the bones of some great beast? Blue the world, blue as blue could be. No, Rhael, stop letting it affect you, he thought! The world was moving now, and Rhael within it. He was on the water in a boat, a hide covered boat with a ragged sail of knitted hair. The shapes of the hides were familiar, strange. He looked over the water and saw the dock where he had been carried and the Kuilbolts with their blue lights and the rat cart. Have they set me out here alone?
Have they set me adrift on this blue sea in the blue world? His thoughts were muddying. Krilshk was there on the pale wooden tiller, gleaming teeth and darting forked tongue. Iztklish pulled him to the mast and retied his bonds. His hands were free for a moment, but he could not will them to life; he could not will them to close around his captor’s scrawny neck. Sleep was taking him, and he railed against it like a drowning man flailing at the water. He was too weak, too incredibly weak to struggle. He was dimly aware of Iztklish making a line fast and the sail snapping taut in the strange wind of the underworld, the boat pulling and creaking as the wind caught in the sail and sped them on a course. The Kuil
bolts began to make a noise together, a kind of singing he could dimly make out as the darkness closed in on him. He listened to the strange sound as he looked to the prow and realized why the hides that were stitched together to form the hull looked so familiar. They were the tanned hides of men. No sooner had he come to the realization than sleep at last overtook him.
Twelve
I’ll take you and your charge,” the captain said. “But the horses’ll cost you extra.”
“How much bloody extra?” Joth had the reins in his hand. He watched the gaudily dressed airship captain as she pored over his writ.
“Well, so you know, a trio’s the limit on horseflesh.”
Joth looked over his shoulder and saw Eilyth looking back, up toward the city wall and the northern gatehouse. “My lady captain, we haven’t the time to barter and bargain. We will pay, or the Magistry will see you compensated. Let’s be aboard and underway.” He had used his best approximation at upper-class inflection.
She glanced at the writ once more then narrowed her eyes at him a bit. “All right, all right. Don’t work yourself into a fury, my good Linesman Joth Andries, First Army of the Magistry.” She read his name and title aloud from the writ, then rolled it up and put it in her belt. “You’ll get it back when I get my pay.” She turned and started back toward the hovering airship. Its hull brightly painted with animal motifs and heraldic symbols, it bore the famous crests of several cities. Lions and drakes and griffons and swans, cranes and eagles, a great fish, crests of cities to cover the continent. The various arms were quartered in a checkerboard pattern that alternated on the four quarters of the hull. He was about to protest when Eilyth caught his attention, and he followed her gaze to the northern wall to see two squads of town guardsmen marching double time out of the gates.
“Elmund, lower the gangway!” The airship’s captain called up to a man in the rigging.
