“Make it look half-assed,” Dante whispered, shoveling some straw over the man’s body.
“That won’t be hard.” Blays circled it, kicking straw on the man’s glaze-eyed face. They shifted enough around to hide the body from casual inspection, then stepped back and glanced throughout the silent yard. Blays’ eyes followed the foot-wide track of blood between the pile of straw and the window to their cell. “And that? Shall I fetch a mop?”
“Only if you’re going to stuff it in your mouth,” Dante said. He beckoned to the shadows and knelt alongside the gleaming trail. Nether poured from his hands and onto the smeared stones, whirling down it like the rapids of a stream. Where it passed the ground was left bare. Dante tugged Blays’ sleeve and they hurried back to the window and stuffed themselves through, waiting in the middle of the original puddle for the nether to finish its business. It poured over the sill, cleansing the floor, then pooled around their feet, seeking what was caking on their skin. It rushed up their limbs, black and noiseless as empty space. When it had finished its cleaning he summoned it to the window and gazed up on the star-pricked sky, then sent it hurtling straight up in as fine a point as it could make. It streaked away without a sound.
The boys faced each other in the room, breathing heavily, laughing nervously. A few drops of blood congealed here and there, but it no longer looked like the obvious murder it had a minute before. Blays picked up the man’s sword off the ground and tucked it under his pallet.
“Do you have any idea why he was here? Who could have sent him?”
Dante shook his head. “Another initiate, maybe, jealous of my progress. One of Larrimore’s other agents, for the same reason.” He shrugged, baffled. “Maybe someone discovered my true purpose and thought he’d win Samarand’s favor taking care of it himself.”
“How could they have done that? What have you been telling Larrimore?”
“I don’t know. It’s impossible to keep it all straight.” Dante thumped down on his bed. Something twinged in chest and he hugged his arms to each other. “I’m always lying, always bluffing to hide what little I do know. I couldn’t tell you a tenth of what I’ve said.” He could feel Blays’ eyes on him, but he couldn’t make himself meet them. The humor that had sustained him all this way, his own private Pridegate, felt shattered and mossed-over as the outer stretches of this thousand-year-old city. “Most of the time I’m all right with it, but sometimes my stomach feels like it’s bleeding from the inside. Do you have any idea what it’s like? I’m on my guard every second of every day. I just want it to be over.”
“I had no idea. You always look the same, you know.” Blays sat down across from him. “We’ve been here too long.”
“I know. You’re right. I should never have let it go this far.” He closed his eyes, shivered. “They’re moving out in a week. We’ll do it then. No matter what.”
“No matter what.” He heard Blays resettling himself among his blankets. “Get some sleep. It helps.”
He tried, but was still awake by dawn. No one else came in the night to strike him dead. In the morning he heard exclamations from the yard, but when he saw Larrimore for the day’s errands the man was inscrutable. Despite the monks’ best efforts to heal them, men did die with some frequency within the walls of the Sealed Citadel, lapsing into drunken squabbles and the long-boiling bitterness that grows among men in cramped quarters. It was possible they thought nothing of finding one more body buried in the straw. Dante was too tired to try to sound out if anyone was suspicious of the man’s death or even who he’d been; he was too tired to be affected any more by that helpless feeling that had taken him after the attempt on his life.
It was almost a blessing when Larrimore ordered him to fill his day informing the priests of a few of the city’s minor temples about a general prayer in the Cathedral of Ivars six nights hence. On his way back to the Citadel, he detoured to the sad wreck of a ruined house. Among the splintery timbers he killed three rats with a flick of nether. There he raised them, hid them in his clothes. By night he set one outside his window, one outside his door, and one inside his room, bidding them to watch from the nooks for anyone who tried to enter. He woke often, gasping and half-panicked from dreams he couldn’t remember, but he saw no silhouettes through the eyes of the rats, heard no furtive footsteps with their ears or his own. He thought the days of the remaining week would drag as long as the endless grammar lessons with Nak, but between his duties and his sleepless haze the hours clipped along like the now-blurred years of his early childhood. Like that, they were gone.
16
With each gate he left he felt a weight lift from his feet. He hadn’t realized, leading his two lives in the keep, how deeply it had marked him, how each false word and fresh lie had lain on his shoulders like a stone. The attempted assassination had nearly broken his nerve; he’d maintained himself only through insomnia and the knowledge his goal had grown definite, that he’d still Samarand’s heart somewhere along the path to the White Tree of Barden. Though he rode at Larrimore’s left at the head of a column of a couple hundred men, Blays was at his side, they were in the saddle, and the cold air hit him with the full freedom of the first moments after a bad dream. The muscle of the horse beneath him. The chill nip of the wind on his unhooded ears and nose. The sword tugging on his left hip when he moved, the mass of the true book in his pack from when he’d slipped out the night before and dug it from the silent yard of the crumbling house just past the near side of the Pridegate. These too weighed on him, but they were a comfort rather than a burden. He’d worn them many miles before whatever was to come in the next few days. Blays, his sword, his book. He didn’t think he’d be coming back, but he took with him everything he’d need.
“You look jolly enough,” Larrimore remarked, gazing out at the battle between city and forest taking place at its forgotten fringes.
“I’ve been cooped up too long. It’s good to be back in the open air.”
“Well, eyes sharp. We’re expecting attack.”
“From who?”
“Who can keep up?” Larrimore shrugged. “Regional rebels. You heard a little about them at the council. No doubt they know Samarand herself is leading this troop.”
“Why do they care?” Dante said, eyes darting among the wreckage of buildings.
“They think Samarand’s ignoring the will of the king and dragging all of Gask to war. Which is sort of true. But the palace leaving Narashtovik didn’t mean they took all its power with them.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The priesthood stayed put. With the kingdom’s power scattered hither and yon, everything got all swapped up. These days it’s almost more like a score of baronies than a kingdom. About the only thing they all agree on is they don’t like Mallon telling them what to do and the norren should shut up and do as they’re told.” He scratched his cheek, regarding Dante. “You should ask Nak about these things, he doesn’t have anything better to do than read about why things happened. Point is, they’re out there, they’ll take their chance, and they’ll die for it.”
Dante nodded. “You’re so certain they’ll fail?”
“Those old men are an army unto themselves,” he said, glancing toward the carriages bearing Samarand and the six other men of the council, one of whom was Jackson. Dante had been surprised to see he’d talked his way on the mission. Samarand’s will had seemed made of iron.
“I suppose the soldiers are no slouch, either,” Dante said. Larrimore grunted agreement. “Well, good. Glad to know we’re not on a suicide mission.”
Most of the soldiers were on foot and after they’d left the Pridegate it was the better part of half an hour before they’d crossed the bridge over the river and left the last mossy vestiges of the city behind. The lead riders took them down a road that ran north-northeast, roughly parallel to the coastline a couple miles distant. The land between them and ocean was spotty with scrubby pines, as if the thick forest to their right couldn’t make the hop acr
oss the rutted dirt trail. Ten or fifteen miles deep into those woods the land cranked up into a range of tall hills or short mountains. Either way, they were heavily snowcapped. It had snowed again in the city and its surroundings a couple days previously, but that had melted in the not-quite-freezing breeze that blew in off the seas each evening. Riders came and went to Larrimore and the carriages that traveled in the caravan’s center. Dante caught fragments of intelligence about the state of the road and the signs of enemy scouts in the mud of the woods. Larrimore murmured orders and rode on, uncharacteristically subdued. Dante kept his eyes roving. Sweat built up beneath his arms.
“Quiet enough out there,” he said to Blays after a time.
“Yep.”
“What’s wrong with them? Are they scared?”
Blays drew back his chin. “You almost sound like you want to be ambushed.”
“I just don’t like waiting.” Dante lowered his hand to the haft of his sword. He remembered how it had felt to wield it in battle, the sense of oneness that came from the timing of a perfect parry, as if his body were in tune with a deep note of the song of the world. The silent potency that took him when he drove the blade home in another man’s ribs. The rush of the nether thrumming in his heart and through his arms to spill the blood of those who’d see him dead. “So what if I am? You’re not?”
“A little, maybe.” Blays sniffed, rubbed his nose. “With all the drilling I’ve been doing it would almost be a waste not to use it.”
The attack came at dusk, when they were some twenty miles from the dead city, too far to be reinforced before the battle was decided. One of their mounted scouts galloped from the woods, wide-eyed and panting, and pulled up before Larrimore.
“They’re coming,” he said, clutching his chest. “Just a few minutes out.”
“That’s all the warning you’ve brought me?”
The rider tossed his head back at the woods. “They concealed themselves well. I could have stepped on them and never known it.”
Larrimore swore thoughtfully. He glanced at Dante, who’d already loosened his sword in its scabbard.
“Stay with the cavalry. Prepare yourselves.”
The column of soldiers had grown irregular with the passage of miles and Larrimore pounded down its length, calling out formations and orders to his captains. Their force made a general shift off the left side of the road, opening perhaps forty yards of clear ground between them and the woods. The carriages were drawn in tight and buffered by a thicket of pikemen. To the pikemen’s front, forming a chevron back along the flanks of the carriage, the swordsmen formed a loose line, letting the two score archers mingle at their front. The cavalry were but a score in number, captained by a dark-bearded man named Rettinger who barked orders in Gaskan to his men.
“We’re to hold at the top of the column,” Dante translated to Blays, “then sweep across their second line once they rush the archers.”
“Not many men for a charge.”
“No time for more complicated maneuvers,” Dante said, and the roar of men’s voices pitched up through the pines to their east. His skin prickled from ears to toes. Larrimore’s voice piped out and the chevron begin to swing so its point faced the bulk of the battle cry. A husky voice rang out and the archers let fly. Dante still couldn’t see anything but shadows of movement among the trees and the first volley provoked no more than a handful of screams. A couple dozen points of light flashed from the edges of the wood, catching the harsh slant of the last rays of the sun, and he saw arrows lancing almost without arc into the front lines of Samarand’s soldiers.
“Can’t let that hold up, we’ve got no cover,” Rettinger said, glancing toward Larrimore. He growled. “Cut across.”
His horsemen followed him across the road and they lingered just before the pines began. The woods weren’t overly dense so close to the road, but it was a forest nonetheless, full of shrubs and cut trunks and rocks half-buried in leaves. More than enough to negate the speed of their horses. Another volley swished from both sides and again the screaming was louder from their own force. Dante gripped his blade. How long would Rettinger let the footmen get shot to pieces?
“Hell with it,” Rettinger said, as if reading the boy’s thoughts, and he whipped out his sword and pointed it forward as he brought his mount to a trot. “In and out. Cut down any man with a bow and get the hell out.”
His men drew arms and fell into a ragged skirmish line. Hooves thunked hard earth. A battle cry ripped up from the bottom point of the column and through the screen of trees Dante saw a mass of footmen charging the force concealed in the wood. Arrows swished over their heads from the archers by the carriages and then more pelted them from the safety of the pines. Men spun in their tracks and thumped against the ground. Then the footmen filtered into the woods and as Rettinger’s men burst upon the front line of archers the music of meeting steel exploded from the southern edge of the battle.
Dante set his eyes on one man as he’d been taught and cocked his arm. An arrow thrummed past his ear and hot rage burned between his eyes. He gasped, nostrils flaring, then the man was before him and he wheeled his blade and screamed and lashed the archer across the face. He glanced toward Blays a couple lengths ahead and saw him knock aside the blade of a pike. To Blays’ left, at their outer flank, an arrow hammered into a rider’s chest and he flopped in the saddle, horse veering left into the lines of enemy footmen. Dante compensated right without thinking and turned in time to duck beneath a pike being jammed at his face. He made a quick stab at an archer diving behind a tree and then bore right to follow Rettinger’s curve back into the open. Swordsmen exchanged blows and shouts. Rettinger called out as the cavalry passed. They broke back into the field and cut back toward the caravan.
Rettinger pulled up and counted off his men. They were missing two. Dante breathed heavily, relishing the air in his lungs, the air that dozens of men had suddenly ceased to taste.
“We’re in reserve for the moment.” Rettinger nodded toward the battle in the woods. “Be ready for another pass if they don’t bring them into the open.”
“Why wait?” said a man with sweat-streaked blond hair.
“Need them in the open so the priests can do their thing.”
Calls of “Retreat!” hued up from the forest. Over the next minute Samarand’s footmen fell back in a scattered mass, backs turned to their pursuers.
“That’s organized,” Dante said to Blays, pointing at the lines visible in their retreating ranks.
“See if they bite,” Blays nodded. The footmen reassembled to the far side of the road. The enemy gushed from the woods and took another volley to their face. Arrows flew irregularly from the cover of the trees. Some of the riders grumbled, pointing to the other flank of footmen holding around the carriages. They were holding fast to the fire of the enemy archers, dragging the dead and wounded behind cover of the coaches and the handful of trees. The retreating forces regrouped and turned to meet their pursuers. Shouts and clanging metal filled the field. Swordsmen continued to rush from the woods. Already the numbers of the two armies looked equal and still the enemy emerged from the wilds.
“Get your men out there!” Larrimore shouted toward Rettinger.
“Let’s cause some chaos,” Rettinger said, lifting his sword, and Dante aped him. He took them wide around the fury of the melee and back into the woods. Long shadows striped the ground. The trees were of decent age and few had branches low enough to interfere with their immediate lines of sight. Rettinger whooped and shouted taunts. The other men bellowed along a split second later, Dante’s young voice mingling with those of the men. They trampled through a loose fringe of stragglers, slowing enough to aim their blows for the softness of the neck. Dante cocked his arm, laughing at the panicked face of an unmounted soldier before he split it in half with his sword. He understood now they weren’t meant to ride down the entire enemy troop. They were the dogs of the hunt, meant to bay, meant to hound, meant to cause panic in the larger
animal. He put those thoughts away and cleaved someone’s skull.
Up ahead a wedge of pikemen scrambled to intercept their course. The riders veered right, deeper into the woods, away from all that hard steel. Blays had raced ahead and Dante spurred his horse to catch pace. He threaded through the trees, keeping one eye on the mass of men rushing off to lay waste to each other, running through the woods, shadows banding their bodies, then emerging for a brief moment to be speared with the glittering dust in an unbroken beam of sunlight. The drumbeat of their hooves drowned out the jangle of swords. They’d been riding for some seconds in a recently-abandoned stretch of wood, circumscribing a wide arc around the battle, and Rettinger made a sharp turn, driving them to the northeast. Dante was so close on Blays’ heels the churned turf of his horse dashed against his face. Within moments they were skimming along the rear guard, lashing out with their simple straight cavalry blades into the dispersed ranks of the rebels, cutting raised arms between elbow and wrist, the sweat and thunder and howls forcing back the dirty-faced men of the opposition. They rode as an ancient law of the world, as destruction on horseback, as the right arm of an angry god. Like that they were in the midst of a sizable troop, up near the front of the forest, slashing archers in their turned backs. Cries rang out and arrows creased the air around their heads. At the head of the charge, Rettinger broke right, straight north away from arrows and swords and pikes. Dante’s horse jerked and uttered a choked whinny. Then his level, speeding world of half-glimpsed faces and whipping branches was replaced by a sudden rush of earth and fallen tree limbs and he felt his legs part from the horse as it went down and his momentum went on. He skidded facefirst through dry pine needles and wet dirt. Some small part of his mind was happy he’d been thrown clear of the wounded horse. Then he rolled to his feet and found himself alone, surrounded by archers and men with hostile swords, the rear of the cavalry hurtling away into the safety of the woods, the drum of their hoofs already obscured by the shouts of men.
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