"Be careful."
The giant moved swiftly from the room and Lucrezia followed her. As Dhalla went down to the door the princess turned the other way, rounding the corner to go along the corridor which led to the barrack-room where the giants were lodged. She had no need to rouse anyone two of them were in the antechamber, wide awake but utterly engrossed in a game of cards. When the princess looked in they both stood up.
"Dhalla's gone over to the stables," Lucrezia said.
"She thinks something's happened to the guardsmen who should be patrolling the inner court. She says that you should . . ."
She was abruptly interrupted by the sound of an explosion. The file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Brian%20Stableford%20-%20Serpents%20Blood.TXT (120 of 495) [11/1/2004 12:26:20 AM]
floor
beneath her feet shuddered.
While the princess stood still, rooted to the spot by astonishment, the two giants reached for their spears. They had not completed the action when a second explosion followed the first, much louder and much closer at hand.
This time the floor leapt instead of shuddering, and Lucrezia put her hands to her ears. She had not been able to tell the direction of the first explosion, but she knew immediately that the second one must have been at the very door of the Inner Sanctum: the door through which Dhalla had passed- or had tried to pass- only seconds before.
The second explosion was instantly followed by a third and a fourth, and the princess was seized by the terrifying thought that the whole tower might be coming down. Panic-stricken, she turned to run for the door. The corridor was already filling up with thick, choking smoke.
From the floors above she could hear the sound of screaming, which grew in a stridulant crescendo as more and more voices joined in. The damage was not as bad as she had expected, although the wooden doors had been blown open, sagging from their hinges. Ignoring the thickening smoke, Lucrezia ran out through the gap. She looked wildly about for Dhalla's body, but it was nowhere to be seen.
She must have got through in time! Lucrezia thought. She must hare been clear before the charge went off! Thank Goran she didn 't catch sight of it and stop to see what it was!
Without pausing for further thought, Lucrezia raced off in the direction of the stables. The one thought in her head was to make sure that the giant was all right, and the stables seemed the obvious place to look for her. The other two giants stayed behind, clearing the debris from the doorway. Their first duty was to see to the safety of the occupants of the tower.
Although the stars were bright the shadows gathered about the fringes of the Great Courtyard deep and dark. There should have been lighted lamps set to either side of the stable doors, but these were among the three which had reportedly gone out- or, as now seemed likely, had been deliberately doused.
It was not until she was almost there that Lucrezia could see that one of the huge doors had been drawn back, and that a cart was waiting within with a team of horses ready hitched.
"7
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The horses had ej^dently been disturbed by the explosions, and the princess's precipitate arrival set them to whinnying wildly, but the beasts were making far less noise than the women in the Sanctum, who were creating enough racket by now to drown the sounds of even the most strenuous boys'
games.
Lucrezia barely had time to dance aside as the horses hitched to the cart were started forward by a whip-crack, but she evaded them gracefully enough and did not fall.
"Dhalla!" she shouted, seeing no reason why she shouldn't add her own voice to the gathering cacophony, since she at least had a good reason for shouting. As soon as the cart was gone Lucrezia moved once again towards the open doorway, but saw her mistake immediately. This time it wasn't possible to be graceful about the business of evasion. She had to dive sideways, and surely would have fallen had not strong arms reached out to catch her and put her upright again.
There was no mistaking those arms, and Lucrezia cried out in wordless relief-- but the giant did not hold on to her for long. As soon as she was out of the way the giantess let go of her, and moved past her. As the cart swept by, Dhalla" leapt up behind, vaulting over the backboard without any apparent effort or difficulty. Lucrezia heard the sound of a violent souffle, and knew that the giant must have landed among men eager to thrust her back again.
Lucrezia was quite certain that her friend did not have her spear with her, for her hands had been empty when she reached out to steady her stumbling mistress. Indeed, as the princess took another step back her foot fell upon the abandoned-weapon. Lucrezia immediately knelt down to grope for it with her hands- and was glad that she did so, for it became obvious almost immediately that there was a third cart yet to come, and a company of men gathered on top of it. There were other men coming on the scene too, hurrying from every direction, and Lucrezia was certain that she would be trampled if she stayed where she was.
The third cart didn't move forward quite as precipitately as the others, and Lucrezia had time enough to run towards it, casting the spear as she ran.
She hurled the weapon as hard as she could, but it was too heavy for her un practised arm, and she could not raise it high enough into the air to make it fly as she had intended.
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It fell low, clattering along the ground- but its head went between the spokes of the leading wheel of the cart, and it was carried around by the turning wheel so that its head smashed against the underside of the cart.
With better luck the spear might have broken the wheel, but the wheel was stronger than the shaft of the weapon, and it was the spear which broke as the cart lurched and rocked, temporarily interrupted as the horses were gathering pace. The interruption was time enough for Lucrezia to leap nimbly up on to the step that gave access to the driver's bench, and in a trice she was beside him, reaching out as though to dispossess him of his whip. There was no thought in her head to tell her how foolish and how reckless she was; she was entirely possessed by wrath and determination.
The carter did not even deign to glance at her. He simply swept his arm back in a short and brutal arc, so that his forearm cannoned into her upper body, catching her just beneath the neck.
She had no chance of riding the blow. The impact tumbled the princess backwards, and she fell into the body of the cart. Already off-balance, she had no way to cushion or interrupt her fall. She felt a sudden wave of dizziness . . .
119
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f from the tiny window in the south-west tower Jacom Cerri watched the two stealthy figures sidle along the deserted walkway to the door of the jail. They moved through the shadows as if darkness were their natural habitat, but they had to come out into the starlight when they came close to the door. Even so, it was impossible to tell whether they were young or old, male or female.
Jacom presumed that the two had come into the citadel in much the same way as Zadok Sart, using legitimate passes. It was obvious that the issuing of such passes had become reckless, and that the places of legitimate tradesmen and their hirelings were being taken by dubious characters. If two men could get in that way, then so could half a hundred . . . but Jacom smiled as he thought of the difficulties these two would face in getting out again, i The door of the jail was barred on the inside, as it always was, but the two felons were prepared for that. The door itself was very sturdy, being renewed at regular intervals, but the glazed loophole let into it at eye height was a weak point. Jacom deduced from their actions that they had pushed aside the shield which protected the spy-hole, removed the glass, and let a pair of threads through the grille. The threads would doubtless carry hooks which could be used a
s miniature grappling-irons to lift the bar securing the door. It seemed impossible that they could lift the bar free and lower it without sending it crashing to the floor, but they managed it.
The two were obviously highly skilled practitioners of the black arts of thievery. Jacom couldn't even be sure that the jailer and the men he had set to lie low in the jailer's anteroom would have heard the bar fall- but someone would have an eye glued to a tiny peephole drilled through the anteroom door, and there was a lantern just
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inside the jail door whose light
the intruders would have to occlude in order to get to the darker corridors beyond.
Jacom had given his men strict instructions to lie low and let the invaders through; he wanted to catch them in the company of the prisoner they had come to release, so that they would have little or no scope for invention when the time came to question them. When the two were safely inside Jacom signalled to four more of his men, indicating that they should move along the walkway and rake up a position outside the door to the prison. He was confident that the trap was now sealed tight.
Jacom stayed where he was. To Guardsman Aaron, the one man who remained by his side, he said: That's it. Signed, sealed and delivered. " He was smugly confident that the prisoner and his would-be rescuers would surrender rather than risk a fall from the un railed walkway, even if they were armed.
"Should be," Aaron admitted un excitedly As the seconds dragged by, though, Jacom began to grow impatient.
What on earth could be taking so long?
When he heard the sound of a challenge, his heart leapt with exultation- but it lurched sickeningly as he realised that the challenge had not been sounded inside the jail, but had come from far below. Someone somewhere began beating an alarm-drum very fervently, but he wasn't sure exactly where the sound was coming from and had not the slightest idea why anyone should think it necessary to rouse the whole citadel.
"What the . . . ?" he began- but the rest of the question was drowned out by an almighty explosion which stunned his eardrums. He felt the tower shake beneath his feet and then there followed three more explosions in very rapid succession, each one seemingly louder than the last. Bright flashes blinded his eyes for a moment, although he could not have caught more than the merest glimpse of the explosions.
The first petard, he knew, must have been placed at the City Gate. As his sight readjusted it became horribly clear that one of the others had been set against the doors of the coinery, and one against the doors of the Inner Sanctum. Flickering flames and thick black smoke were billowing about in both doorways, and from his lofty station Jacom could see running figures hurdling the wreckage in both directions.
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His first though^ was that such things couldn't happen, and never did.
What sort of man would take the enormous risks involved in handling so much explosive material? And what sort of man could possibly be mad enough to smuggle such stuff into the citadel of Xandria? It occurred to him that he had removed half a dozen of the sentries whose purpose was to ensure that such things never happened. The terrible possibility that he had been tricked and manipulated was suddenly all too clear.
"They've blown the gate!" said Aaron disbelievingly. They've only gone and blown the rotting gate! "
Jacom calculated, with icy lucidity, that the four men he had left on guard at the City Gate were highly likely to have been injured, perhaps killed, and that he had removed the men who would normally have been first to run to their aid.
The alarm-drum would rouse a hundred and fifty extra guardsmen from their various barrack-rooms plus another hundred constables and servants authorised to bear arms and twenty officers to yell orders at them, but he was the commander of the watch: the one man who was supposed to be able to judge what ought to be done, and by whom, in immediate answer to this carefully sown havoc. With this thought in mind he ran full tilt from the room, ignoring the residual pain of his bruises, taking the steps three at a time as he headed for the City Gate, forgetting all about the jail and the men he had stationed there.
"Assemble by the gate!" he howled to anyone within earshot.
"Keep the bastards out at all costs!"
There seemed little point in the alarm-drum continuing its urgent throb, given that no one within the walls could possibly have slept through the explosions, but the boy whose task it was clung to his duty regardless. The sound laid down an ominous undercurrent to the screams of panic which were emanating from the Inner Sanctum and the cries of anguish which were rising from the mint.
There were four men waiting at the foot of the stairway, not knowing which way to run.
"The gate!" Jacom yelled again, only realising as his words were drowned out how difficult it was to make himself heard. He raised his arm and stabbed the index finger in the direction of the City
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Gate. One of the men saluted
him, and all four ran alongside him. As they arrived at the gatehouse a guardsman staggered back from the doorway, evidently having been expelled by force. He collapsed to the ground in front of them. Jacom leapt over the prostrate body and two of the men who had accompanied him hurled themselves through the open doorway, intent on punishing the invisible assailants.
Jacom did not follow them- instead he went to the great gate himself, which had been blown apart.
The huge and gaping hole which was still belching forth thick clouds of acrid smoke was more than wide enough to drive a horse and cart through, but nothing of that size was coming through as yet. Indeed, nobody seemed to be coming in at all- although there were several figures hanging back within the gate, waiting to run out as soon as the smoke cleared. For a moment Jacom thought that they must be with the attackers, but they were liveried as servants, and he realised that they simply wanted to get away. He understood why they were in such a hurry. Xandria's citadel might be famed for the awesome strength of its walls, but everyone who lived within it knew full well that rot worked in its heart, just as it worked in the heart of every other structure. The instinct of every man and woman said that no edifice was to be trusted in the face of such sudden violence. In theory, the walls of the citadel had been built to withstand the shock of any and all explosions, but if a chain reaction of cracking and crumbling got to work on the stone, anything might happen. No one now alive in Xandria had ever been forced to withstand siege or bombardment, and Jacom knew that untested courage usually proved fragile.
The crowd about the gate was swelling rapidly. Half a hundred servants were quartered in the lower levels of the towers to either side of the City Gate, and allot them had leapt out of their beds, grabbing whatever came conveniently to hand as they made their exits. Not one in five of those authorised to bear arms had bothered to seize anything which might be used as a weapon, and even those who had taken up cudgels seemed bent on self-defence rather than the apprehension of whoever had set the explosives, but Jacom knew that he had to impose some order on the gathering confusion.
"Form a cordon across the gateway!" Jacom yelled, relying on his own men to take notice and set an example.
"What's without, for Goran's sake?"
^3
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"No enemy in siaht!" came back the cry.
What's happening here? Jacom asked himself silently. What kind of corruption is thisf It was then, and only then, that he guessed the truth.
No secret army waited beyond the gate, eager to take the citadel by storm.
The marauders within were not an advance guard but a whole expeditio
nary force, whose target could only be . the royal treasury. As the smoke cleared Jacom fought his way through the milling throng to stand within the arch of the shattered gate. He was relieved to see that there were no corpses mingled with the wreckage. His men were barely holding a formation while the panic-stricken servants began to flock past them and spill out into the square beyond. It was obvious that the guardsmen could not hold the yawning gap against any substantial assault. Those who had so far gathered only carried swords; they had not a single pike between them.
Jacom joined the line and began yelling at the crowd, telling the servants to be calm. He might as well have tried to howl down the wind.
He looked out into the open concourse outside the gate. There were plenty of people about, hundreds having hurried from the nearby houses and the wooden shanties erected along the wall to see what was afoot, and the (nob was swelling by the minute, its members eagerly receiving-the refugees from. the citadel, plying them with urgent questions as to what was going on. Jacom suppressed an impulse to wave his arms about and order the crowd back. Let them stay, he thought. Let them all stay, to form a barrier with their bodies even though they have no weapons.
"Hold the line solid!" he cried out to his men.
"Let no one pass, inwards or outwards. Hold the line!"
He had no idea what was happening inside the gatehouse, and no idea how long it would take for an adequate number of reinforcements to gather. He supposed that help must be on its way but asked himself anxiously whether it would come in time.
The answer, it seemed, was no.
A large cart pulled by four horses came hurtling towards the gate from the direction of the Great Courtyard, scattering the crowd before it.
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Jacom's hope that an impenetrable wall of human flesh might build up spontaneously before his thin line of armed defenders was instantly dashed.
Serpent's Blood Page 15
