Akuyun Villa, Preddi City
Okan Akuyun sat up in bed. Rabia stirred beside him, but she was harder to rouse. He crossed to the bedroom door and cracked it open. Lieutenant Nestor, one of his aides, stood rocking side to side, a tense expression on his twenty-one-year-old face.
“Sorry, General. Colonel Ketin sent a messenger. The colonel needs you at headquarters.”
“Any word why?”
“No, General.”
“Send the messenger back and tell Colonel Ketin I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Akuyun closed the door. Now what? he wondered. Some word from Zulfa? Has he gotten into some trouble? A ship from Narthon? No, not arriving in the middle of the night. It would be dawn before a ship could moor.
“What is it?” Rabia called out drowsily from the bed.
“No idea,” said Akuyun. “Ketin wants me at headquarters.”
Rabia sat up in bed, the covers falling to her waist. She slept in sheer nightgowns, and, emergency or not, he took a moment to gaze on her form, which never ceased to please him.
“Should I get you something to eat or drink while you dress?”
“No, dear. Go back to sleep. If it’s something I can handle, I’ll try to come back to eat and get a little more sleep.”
Nestor was a good aide. By the time Akuyun had splashed some water on his face, dressed, and rushed out the villa’s front door, a saddled horse and four mounted guards waited for him. Another five minutes, and he arrived at headquarters and saluted the guards at the door as he rushed through. He took the stairs two at a time. The closer he’d gotten to headquarters, the more anxious he’d become. There had been too many surprises the last six months.
He found Ketin and several other officers in the planning room, where maps covered the walls, along with the desks and the tables that occupied most of the floor space. One man wore spurs, his uniform coated with dust. All of them stood around a map of Preddi Province and talked until Ketin spotted Akuyun.
“General, a messenger from Ponth. It’s not confirmed yet, but several Eywellese rode into Ponth, claiming at least a hundred clan horsemen are headed that way. And they include cannon.”
Akuyun remained calm. Although this was unexpected, he’d had enough experiences of being surprised that his instinctive reaction was to gather more information before making a decision.
“Not confirmed, you say? Has the commander at Ponth sent out patrols to try to find these clansmen?”
“Sir,” spoke up the messenger, “four cavalry squads were sent out, fanning from the shore to twenty miles north and east of Ponth. They were leaving as I was, so there may be more information by now.”
“Maybe,” said Akuyun. “If there is, it’s in Ponth or on the way here, but not here now.” He turned to Ketin. “Colonel, let’s not take any chances.” He went to a wall map of an area showing twenty miles from Preddi City. “Let’s push the ready infantry battalion out to the bridge and ford here.” Akuyun pointed at the map. “They’re supposed to be able to leave on thirty minutes’ notice. Another hour and a half by wagon and they should be setting up defensive positions in two hours.”
One of Akuyun’s innovations, and one he hadn’t yet convinced superiors of, before he’d left for Caedellium, was using wagons to transport infantry and the men fighting on foot only when at a battle site. More traditional officers had not seen a reason to use horses to move infantry, except in unusual circumstances.
“Get a semaphore message off to Erdelin in Hanslow at daybreak. Let’s see if there’s been any action he knows of. For here, let’s make two plans. One, to send a cavalry battalion and 8-pounder batteries toward Ponth, and a second plan for two infantry regiments to begin moving after the cavalry. We won’t move until we have more information.”
Sadek Hizer had come into the room shortly after Akuyun. He stood looking hard at the wall maps.
“Assessor Hizer, what’s your opinion of what we’re hearing?” asked Akuyun.
“As you say, General, we need more information. However, I doubt this is a serious attack on us here in Preddi Province. Even though we have fewer agents than before, there’s enough to have picked up on something as big as a serious attack. I suspect this is more a spoiling raid, a big-enough force to do damage. That’s assuming this one report is accurate and not the imagination of some overexcited Eywellese.”
Hanslow, Eywell Province
The five men stood at the base of the Hanslow main wall. Below them, down the steep, scree-covered slope, flowed the Falworth River, thankfully running relatively low, since no rain had fallen the last sixday. As they made their way from the thicket where they’d left the horses staked out, rain began to fall. Balwis gave a quick and uncharacteristic prayer that the drizzle would continue or intensify to help hide their escape, assuming any of them survived to flee.
“I wish that Moreland woman had noticed better where the gap in the wall was,” whispered Kales.
“That Moreland woman is Anarynd,” rejoined Balwis. He had not interacted much with Maera’s friend, though he’d been impressed by her steely recounting of what had happened to her and her serious attempt to remember everything she could. She reported on the gap in Hanslow’s riverside wall and the route to Erdelin’s villa and went into great detail about the villa itself. Only with the latter did Anarynd’s composure falter, especially when describing Erdelin’s bedroom, including the location of the bed, when he usually went to sleep, whether he kept weapons within reach, and whether he kept a woman in the bed after he had finished with her or he sent her to sleep elsewhere.
“She and Gwyned did well to remember as much as they did,” said Balwis, “considering what must have gone through their minds when they risked an escape attempt and shepherded a flock of women they hadn’t planned on.”
Kales grunted, which Balwis took as a grudging acknowledgment. “It still leaves us needing to find the fucking hole, if it still exists and the damn Eywellese didn’t seal it.”
“This section can’t be more than four hundred yards long,” said Balwis, recalling how the wall looked from the thicket. At the moment, they could only see thirty yards. A cloud cover and drizzle had moved in and blocked the light from the stars and Aedan. “I’ll go to the right and you to the left,” he told Kales. “Come back if you find the gap or reach the end of the bluff.”
“You three stay here,” Balwis ordered the other men.
Six minutes later, both Balwis and Kales returned.
“I didn’t find it,” said Kales.
“I did,” said Balwis, in a tone Kales wondered whether showed pleasure or regret.
“It’s about a hundred yards away. It’s a tight fit with the packs, but I slipped all the way in, until I found the jumble of blocks on the other side, just as Anarynd and Gwyned described.”
The drizzle had changed to a steady rain, and when they exited through the gap, they froze for a moment to hear voices thirty feet above them on the wall’s rampart.
“Goddamn it, why do I always end up with night watch when it rains?” complained a Narthani voice, making no effort to maintain silence.
“I can only think of two reasons,” came a loud reply from a second voice, “either you pissed off whoever makes up the watch list or the god Narth hates you.”
Descriptions of what the second man could do with his private member were followed by raucous laughter, which faded as the men moved away along the wall’s top.
Balwis translated, and Kales commented, “If God really does hate that idiot up there, maybe he loves us. I think the rain is getting heavier.”
Kales had no sooner whispered the words than they could hear the sound of rain pounding on rooftops and getting closer by the second. They had crawled through the jumble of stone blocks facing the street that paralleled the wall when larger raindrops splattered on their faces. A torrential downpour shut out all other sounds and limited visibility to ten yards.
“Thank you, God, if you’re real. I’ll even
go to cathedral and pray along, if you keep this rain going for another hour or so,” tittered Kales, raising his voice to be heard over the drumming of the rain.
“For once, I agree with you,” said Balwis. “No reason to try to act inconspicuous. Anyone not running in this rain will draw more attention than anyone creeping around. Let’s run.”
And ran they did. Up main streets, down alleys, and sometimes crossing streets they’d already traversed. Nothing looked consistent with Anarynd’s and Gwyned’s descriptions. Despite Balwis’s memory of Hanslow and the information from Anarynd and Gwyned, an hour passed and their concern mounted that they might have to give up, because dawn was only a few hours away. They never considered leaving and reentering the city. The fortuitous rain and Welman Stent’s force moving into Eywell Province in the morning would make getting back into Hanslow nearly impossible. Guards would increase, or Erdelin could be in the middle of Narthani forces, as they reacted to the incursion, if he were still in the city at all. It had to be tonight.
“I can see Aedan to the south,” hissed Kales.
Balwis turned his head. There it was: the moon Aedan visible on the horizon as a hazy globe. That meant the weather front that brought the rain would soon pass. Though Balwis couldn’t tell for sure, he thought the downpour had slackened.
“If we don’t go soon, we ain’t going anywhere, except into the ground,” said Kales.
“Just to the end of this street,” said Balwis. “This matches what Anarynd said about alternating two- and three-story structures. If it’s right, there should be a plaza around the corner and Erdelin’s villa on the other side. If it’s not there, then we’ll go. Shit!”
They continued trotting down the street, staying clumped together, as would any group of men in the rain—not single file, as assassins would act. They hoped. They turned the corner. There was enough light for them to tell that the side street opened to space. Thirty more yards and they stood at the edge of a plaza. They couldn’t clearly see the other side.
“This has to be it. Anarynd just didn’t remember the short street section between the plaza and the other street,” said Balwis.
“We’ll work our way around to the right,” said Kales. “If this is it, there should be a cluster of trees along the side. We won’t have time to study it, if we’re going in. Time is too short.”
Five minutes later, Balwis climbed down from one of a dozen trees clustered along the outside of the villa’s outer wall.
“This is it. The front is exactly like Anarynd described, right down to the ironwork horse rail and two big urns flanking the front door. But there’s a complication. There should only be one guard at the door. Instead, there are two. Both are right under a whale-oil lantern and are doing their best to stay out of the rain. I didn’t see either of them look around or at each other even once in the couple of minutes I watched. I don’t think we can count on knowing how many guards there are, anywhere.”
“Erdelin’s room should be the third to fifth windows on the second floor on this side,” whispered Kales. “We don’t want him moving around the house, so we’ll have to get him in the bedroom. That means climbing and entering a window.”
Balwis couldn’t see Kales’s face, but he’d have bet everything he owned that the wiry man was grinning.
“You can’t go alone,” said Balwis. “After getting this far, we have to be sure. What if Erdelin is awake or not in his room or you get injured or . . . hell, anything can go wrong. The villa is made from stone blocks, and it looks like the mortar is recessed enough for grips and toeholds, so neither of us should need your climbing claws, unless you need one for your hand?”
“I don’t,” whispered Kales. “The knife hilt can serve to jam into the crevices. I’ll still be faster than you.”
Balwis gathered the other three men. “Kales and I are going in after Erdelin. If we can do it quietly, we’ll come back out the window and over the wall to here. If it’s noisy, the guards will come running. We know there are three in front of the house, two by the door and one at the villa wall’s main gate. There’s supposed to be one at the back and one inside, but who knows? If the guards are alerted, we don’t have any choice but to kill them all before we leave. Otherwise, word would get out too soon, and we’d never escape the city.
“We’ll leave you our muskets and go in with only blades and pistols. Follow us over the wall. There’s a bin ten feet to the left. We can use it to get back over the wall. You’ll have to judge whether the guards are alerted. In that case, don’t worry about being quiet. Just kill them. Kales and I will come out the front door.” In the faint light from a few lit windows, Balwis could just make out three nods of understanding.
“If any of you believe in God, this is a good time to call on him. Kales, I’m after you.”
With those words, Kales dropped his pack containing the climbing claws and clambered up the same tree Balwis had used. Four men followed Kales. One by one, they jumped to the ground inside the villa grounds. Kales and Balwis handed off their muskets and, bending low, moved quickly to the villa wall. Kales ran his hand over the stone blocks and checked the gaps between blocks.
“Plenty of room,” Kales whispered and started up the wall. Balwis followed. Kales swarmed up the wall as if it were horizontal, but Balwis had broader fingers than Kales, and he had to jam his fingertips between some blocks to secure a hold. When Balwis had scaled halfway up the wall, Kales already stood on the balcony, peering into one window and then the next.
“Can’t see anyone inside,” whispered Kales, when Balwis reached him. “There’s a lantern burning low over by a desk at the right of the room. I think I could see a door in the middle of the far wall. We’ll have to go in cold and hope to find Erdelin asleep somewhere in the room. None of the windows open, so we’ll go in through the balcony door.”
They crouched in front of the door, and Kales used his good hand to apply firm, slow pressure to the door’s latch. There was a faint creak, and Kales froze, listened for almost a minute, then pressed a bit more. The latch rotated a fraction, then freely for a quarter of a circle before stopping. He pulled, and the door gradually moved outward. When it was ajar a foot, Kales stopped and waited again, then opened it further, pulled a second knife, and slipped inside. The opening wasn’t wide enough for Balwis, and he pulled gently. The gap had just widened enough for him, when a hinge squeaked. There was a rustle inside the room. A flash illuminated enough for Balwis to see a tall man, naked and holding a pistol. Balwis ducked by reflex, but a zip and breaking glass before he’d reacted told Balwis the occupant had fired and missed.
A woman screamed. A man cursed. Balwis flung open the door and rushed in. The low lantern gave enough light to reveal two men grappling, then leaping apart. The lantern light reflected off metal, as blades seemed to fly around the two men. A woman started to scream, then choked it off. Balwis assumed Kales to be the shorter of the men, but he couldn’t be positive enough to use a pistol, and he feared drawing his own knife and joining in. The men moved too fast in the dim light.
Balwis heard a musket fire outside. A second musket. Yelling. A third shot. More yelling. He thought he recognized one of his men’s voices.
The shorter man never spoke a word, but the taller man cursed in Narthani. The tall man grunted and staggered back, catching his bare foot on the edge of a thick rug. Before he could recover, the other man was inside the Narthani’s guard, his left arm jabbing outward. The tall man cried out in pain and shock, before the other man slashed across his throat with another blade. The Narthani fell to his knees.
“Here’s for Anid, you fucker!” Kales yelled and stabbed Erdelin in the chest. “And Norlin and Mirramel and guards whose names I don’t know.”
Erdelin was dead before the second stab.
Footsteps pounded outside the bedroom door. Balwis stepped to the wall beside the door, as it burst open. A man in a Narthani uniform carrying a musket dashed into the room. Balwis shot him in the back, then looke
d into the hall. It was empty. More shots sounded, though from where he couldn’t tell. He turned back into the room and went to the bedding in a corner of the room. A woman sat there, only a sheet covering her from the waist down. She wasn’t screaming anymore, but her eyes flared wide as Balwis approached.
“Was that Erdelin?” he demanded. When she didn’t answer immediately, he reached out, grabbed her by the hair, and turned her head toward the body. “Is that Erdelin?!”
She choked and nodded. “Yes. That’s him, the bastard! May he rot in hell!”
“Who are you?” asked Balwis.
“His slave! Who the hell do you think I am?” she spit out, momentarily overcoming her fear.
Kales walked up. “We have to go, now! There’s fighting outside, and we don’t know who’s winning.” He looked at the woman. “She’s a witness.”
“So?” said Balwis. “She won’t warn anyone faster than the firing has already done.”
“Are you clansmen?” she asked, throwing aside the covers and rising to her feet. Adrenaline flowing or not and the need to move or not, Balwis couldn’t help but admire her voluptuous, firm figure.
She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m from Pewitt. The Narthani took me in a raid on my village two months ago. That pig on the floor claimed me. You have to take me with you.”
“You’d only slow us down,” said Kales. “Just tell the Narthani it was clansmen, and we spared you only because you weren’t Narthani.”
“As if they’d give a shit. They’ll probably torture me to see if I’m telling the truth, then either kill me or send me to the brothels.”
“I could just slit her throat, and then all our problems would be solved,” Kales offered. “She’ll slow us too much.”
The woman gasped and sat back on the bed.
Balwis asked, “And what would Teena think when she found out?”
Kales laughed. “I just wanted to see what you’d say. I might actually start to like you, even if you don’t have much of a sense of humor.”
Heavier Than a Mountain (Destiny's Crucible Book 3) Page 50
