And Fire take him if he didn’t still have the children in tow.
“All right,” Tejohn whispered. “Follow me.”
He led them to a narrow side street, then into an alley behind a row of shops. The place smelled like rotten fish and other garbage, but aside from the endless, distant pounding, everything was quiet.
“What are we going to do next?” the eldest boy said.
“Yeah!” two or three of the kids added.
“Nothing,” Tejohn answered. “Don’t make that face. If the holdfast is still standing—and the sound of grunts pounding on the doors suggest that it is—I need to drive away the grunts. To do that, I need to scout their positions.”
“Let me do it,” the eldest boy said. “This is my neighborhood. I know exactly where to go to look out over the courtyard and the holdfast without being seen.”
“No,” Tejohn said firmly. “You’ll stay here where it’s safe.”
The boy rolled his eyes. “I can be your eyes. You don’t know the way.”
“I’ll make do.”
Tejohn felt a tugging on the back of his cuirass. It was the same little girl who kept rapping on his armor. “Siltzen really is very sneaky. He’s good at avoiding the watch and the guard.”
“Maybe so,” Tejohn said, “but this is different. His life—” The boy was gone. “Where did he go? Where?”
The two women looked at each other and shrugged. They hadn’t seen the boy slip away, either.
The little girl laid her hand on Tejohn’s elbow. “See?”
“Against the wall,” Tejohn said. “Everyone against the wall.” He herded the kids against the fish shop, then positioned the two adults at either end. They all crouched low between two stacks of leaking, slimy barrels. It wasn’t much cover, but it was better than nothing. “Points high and keep still.”
Fire and Fury, where had that boy gone? It was bad enough if he was found by a grunt and bitten, but if the beasts were hungry…
This was Tejohn’s fault. He should have found a safe space for them downslope, then cured someone to help protect them.
“You need our help,” the eldest girl whispered to him. “We have weapons and there’s no one else--”
“I have a plan,” Tejohn lied, “but you all need to be safe before--”
“Psst!” They all glanced up. Siltzen poked his head over the roof of the shop above. “Soldier, come and see.”
Fine. He would go and see what the boy had to show him, then send him back to the others. Tejohn boosted himself onto a barrel, handed up both of his spears, and muscled himself over the rim of the building.
The boy, Siltzen, looked even more slender and fragile lying on the roof. Without a word, he gestured for Tejohn to follow.
They crawled over the tarred wooded slats to the edge of the building, then along a plank that stretched across another alley. All around them, the wall rose only a foot or so higher than the level of the roof, so Tejohn had to crawl with his knees splayed like a frog but without letting his cuirass scrape the wood--not easy while holding his kinzchu spear out of sight. The boy led him to a gap in the northern wall and pointed. Tejohn wanted to look southward toward their objective, the holdfast, not back where they had just come.
Still, it was easier to take a look instead of arguing about it. He removed his helmet and looked northward, toward the Marsh Gate, and immediately noticed the columns of white smoke at the bottom of the slope--the fires he’d created when he cured the grunts must have spread. He also saw a dozen blue figures leaping from one rooftop to another.
Shouldn’t the Fire-taken grunts be headed north toward the fires rather than spreading out from them? Several of the beasts were heading to the east or west, but at least half were moving directly uphill. They’d be here soon. It was a miracle that he’d avoided them before now.
Worse, the little ones were still below. He’d been ready to face one or two of the creatures out in the open, but using spears in alleyways, when the enemy could be above or behind you, was a tactical nightmare.
Siltzen urged Tejohn toward another gap in the wall on the southern end of the roof, and he peered through. The courtyard lay below them, and it was teeming with activity. There were at least a hundred human beings sitting close together on the stony soil, listless in the sun. Around them paced at least triple that number of blue-furred grunts.
Fire and Fury, that was more grunts than Tejohn had ever seen in one place, even on that terrible day in Peradain.
One of the men began to shudder and convulse and the people near him surged away. The crowd obscured Tejohn’s view, but he could see a spray of blood. Then he heard again that chorus of roars, but this time it was so close, it was deafening.
Where the man had collapsed, a blood-streaked grunt rose from the ground. It roared again, turning in a circle like a dog looking for its kill. The people around it cringed and threw themselves in front of their loved ones—children, Tejohn saw for the first time. Among the humans were a great many terrified little children.
The grunt looked over them all as though it wanted to tear into them. Siltzen, lying beside Tejohn, sucked in an anxious breath as though certain he was about to see a murder.
It didn’t happen. The Blessing do not destroy themselves, only others. The beast noticed a bloody carcass against the wall and bounded through the crowd toward it. At first, Tejohn was convinced it was a heap of human corpses, but no, there was a strip of matted fur and a pair of curving horns. They were okshim, possibly the beasts Granny Nin had brought with her.
There wasn’t much left in that pile of bones. Considering how much Lar had eaten when he’d transformed, Tejohn figured those dead animals would feed two, maybe three more grunts…
That was the third chorus of roars Tejohn had heard since he’d climbed down from the northern wall. If they continued at this pace, Saltstone would be full of starving grunts by nightfall. He had to drive them out and cure the humans who had not yet transformed as soon as possible, and he couldn’t do that until the children were safe.
An exceedingly simple plan came to him. It would not win the admiration of historians, nor would it inspire a song filled with careful symbolism to be sung at the next Festival. But it ought to be enough to terrify The Blessing into showing their backsides and running like mad.
Tejohn laid a hand on Siltzen’s shoulder. They both backed away from the edge of the roof.
In a low voice, Tejohn said, “I need you to take the children to a safe place. You know—”
“My father is down there,” the boy interrupted. “Do you see the tall man with the gray cloth wrapped around his head?” He pointed toward the southwest, but Tejohn did not crawl to the gap to spot the man.
“You know a safe place for those children,” Tejohn continued. “Right? You take them there and leave your father to me.”
The boy looked away, frowning, then looked into Tejohn’s face directly. “You’ll save him by yourself?”
“I will.”
“Alone?”
“Boy…” Tejohn stopped himself. There was no point in being sharp with him. “Boy, I doubt there’s a living human left in Kal-Maddum with a better chance at this than me, just as there’s no one in Saltstone more able than you to find a safe hiding place for those little ones back there. If the grunts find them—”
“Brolla’s mother is out there, too. And her little sister.”
Tejohn grit his teeth. “If those little ones are discovered, they won’t be cursed, understand? They’ll be torn apart and eaten. It’s possible the one doing it will be your father, or Brolla’s mother. How much clearer do I have to be?”
“I can help,” the boy said stubbornly. “I’m not trained, but I can hit things with a stick. It’s not complicated.”
“Using the weapon is not the hard part,” Tejohn said. “The hard part is standing your ground when the enemy charges at you. When it screams for your blood and bares its teeth, and you realize…” He gripped his spear t
ightly. “I saw you earlier today, when you threw your weapon rather than attack with it. You are not ready. If you go out to face the grunts, you will only make things worse both for me and for those little ones. They look up to you, you know.”
“No, they don’t,” he said quickly. “Not those kids.”
Tejohn laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder again. “You will get your chance. There is a world full of grunts out there, I promise you. Now I want you to promise me you will protect those children. Find a cellar, an attic, a storeroom with a single, defensible entrance and some food, and hole up there. I can’t—” He shut his eyes as the image of his murdered child appeared in his mind yet again. No one could ever be truly cured of the flinches. “I can’t do what I need to do if I’m worried about their safety.”
“I promise to take them to a safe place,” the boy said resentfully.
Tejohn let out a long, slow breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Thank you. I’ll send your families out to find you when it’s all done. Go quickly now. More are coming from the south.”
The boy scrambled back the way he came. Tejohn was tempted to take his spear from him, but he didn’t want to dishonor the choice the boy had just made. Besides, he might run into trouble.
Tejohn himself crawled westward along the rooftop toward the holdfast. That building was sealed tight, with a handful of determined grunts battering away at the doors. He was close enough now to see it was thick with spatters of drying gray blood; the beasts beat themselves bloody against the barricade, backed away long enough to heal, then went at their relentless attack again.
The wooden doors must have come apart long ago; now the entrance was blocked by stacks of scholar-created granite. The other wooden buildings around the great hall entrance were full of grunts moving through the balconies and over the roofs like hunting cats, but the doorways inside must have been blocked, too.
Tejohn couldn’t help but wonder what it was like for the people trapped inside with Doctor Twofin. Were they working on a plan? Hiding from the wizard who had become their tyr? Holding out as long as possible before they leaped from a gallery onto the rocks below?
After crossing over three buildings, Tejohn crawled back toward the alley side of the building and carefully lowered himself to the ground. A quick glance showed the alley was empty; Siltzen had moved the children. Good.
Taking both spears in his left hand--and wishing he still had his shield--Tejohn moved carefully westward, toward the sheer black cliffs on that side of the pass. Surely there would be something—there. He found a slender tin rod no longer than his middle finger. One end was sharp like a needle; maybe it was a pick of some kind.
It didn’t matter. It was small and it would make noise when it hit stone. All Tejohn needed to do was distract the grunts so he could sneak up on them from behind. Once he hit a few of them, he could withdraw out of sight until they began to burn. At that point, the rest of The Blessing ought to be spooked enough to flee.
He hoped. His simple plan had sounded much more sensible on the rooftop. Now that he was standing at the corner of the westernmost store in the courtyard, with the grunts only a few feet away on the other side of this shop, it seemed like a high dive into shallow water.
One man against hundreds of grunts.
Monument sustain me and my courage. Tejohn shut his eyes. He could have gone east with that Indregai princess and her beautiful friend. He could have flown straight to Beargrunt. He could have fought beside them here, at the end of the world, instead of alone in the lands of a minor tyr he had happily murdered.
He’d put his duty ahead of his wife and children. “Laoni,” he whispered. “Teberr. Insel. Alina.” Could they feel his love for them, like a tickle at the back of their thoughts? Could they understand how much he wished he was a different man? A more selfish man?
Too late now. It was true. His chance to travel to his family had passed. He’d come here instead, his head full of notions about the greater good. Song knew he’d meant to do what was right.
He took a deep breath, then forced himself to stand tall. Every soldier had similar thoughts before a battle. To surrender to them was to be conquered before the battle was even fought.
It was time to do his work.
He leaned ever so slightly around the corner of the building, peering at the road and the cliff face beyond. He didn’t see any grunts at all until he had come almost completely out of hiding. Looking along the side of the shop, he could see the back half of a pair of blue grunts crouching in the gravel.
Fine. Tejohn had more ground to cover than expected, but no matter. He slipped on his helm, flexed his throwing arm a few times to warm it up, then took hold of the tin pick. All he had to do was heave it over the roof and wait for it to strike somewhere out in the courtyard. While the grunts turned toward the sound, he would make his move. He drew back his arm.
Grateful am I to be permitted to travel The Way.
For no reason at all, he glanced to his left, looking eastward along the long alleyway, and he saw them: the children he had told to find cover.
They were preparing to attack the grunts. The old woman and the very youngest of the kids were nowhere in sight, but Siltzen was trying to make the barefoot heiress and a few of the other older children form a wedge.
When it screams for your blood and bares its teeth… Tejohn had said. Had he really been stupid enough think that would scare off a boy Siltzen’s age, desperate to prove himself?
One look at the way they stood, each holding a spear as if it were a banner, and he knew they might make their move at any moment and that they would not survive it.
Without taking a moment to consider the consequences, Tejohn hurled the pick over the building and charged around the corner of the building, taking up a spear in each hand. This was a suicide attack, he was sure of it, but if he could touch one, maybe two of the grunts before the children started their doomed offensive, he might make The Blessing break and run. They would turn on him first, yes. He expected to be swarmed before the kinzchu stones could do their work, but better that than--
The pick struck the ground while he was still four steps away from the two closest grunts. Even among the restless, pacing creatures with the endless pounding of fist against stone, the bright ring of metal on stone made them stop and turn to the sound, suddenly alert.
Feeling the wind at his back, Tejohn flung himself forward, stabbing forward with both spears at once, catching the two nearest grunts full on the back before they could turn to him. Both collapsed instantly. Without slowing at all, he passed between them, his boot landing right beside their heads--close enough to bite--and he struck again, hitting two more grunts in a cluster just as they turned toward him.
Fire and Fury, the creatures were everywhere. Blue-furred grunts--not as large as the purple giant he’d faced in this same courtyard once before, but they turned toward him with one motion. Tejohn could see the long claws, the powerful shoulders, the vicious fangs that were as long as a grass lion’s, and worst of all, the wild look in their eyes, like starved dogs.
He leaped sideways onto the porch of the shop, and at a glance, he could see someone had once sold charcoal from here. I’m going to die in a coal bin. The grunts took deep breaths, all at once, and roared at him, drowning out the death cries of the ones he’d already struck. Drowning out the sound that he had hoped would drive them away and save them all.
Chapter 24
Three hundred grunts roaring in unison was a brutal, oppressive sound, like being caught suddenly in a river current. Tejohn knew they were speaking, too; they were shouting their name at him.
“Laoni!” he roared back. Then he took a deep breath and shouted her name again while he threw himself at the creatures at the top of the stairs. The grunts surged forward, colliding with each other in a wild-eyed frenzy.
Grateful am I--
The spear in Tejohn’s left hand was batted aside by the leading grunt, who immediately collaps
ed onto the rough planks. The spear twisted across his body as the one in his right hand jabbed forward into the knot of creatures. Another collapsed, but it wasn’t enough to break the surge, only to ease the tangle of enemies that wanted to tear him apart. One of the beasts smashed an open claw against the front of his kinzchu stone point, and the spear shivered.
The shaft came apart and the anti-magic stone clattered at his feet. A heavy figure rushed at him from the left and he dropped to the floor, clutching at the broken spear head. His longer weapon was lost to him already, but as the creatures rushed at him, his fingers closed on the business end of his broken spear and he began to lay about with it.
Heavy bodies fell onto his back, pinning him.
They didn’t break and run. Cazia, be warned that they--
A grunt dropped low beside him, its jaws gaping over his right wrist.
One of The Blessing’s death cries sounded from beside him, then another and another, like a small chorus. The grunt that had been about to bite him hesitated and looked around, trying to find the source of the danger.
Just then, a deafening eagle’s scream sounded. Tejohn could not lift his head to see what was happening, but the grunts nearest to him lifted their heads and shrank down low like nervous prey. Then a huge shadow passed overhead, and he caught a glimpse of two massive taloned feet dragging kinzchu spears through the mob of grunts.
Tejohn struck out with the broken spear point, touching the grunt that had been about to bite him. It collapsed onto his weapon arm, pinning him and making him helpless. The stink of burning fur wafted across his face, acrid and awful. The beasts had caught wind of it, too, and were slowly backing down off the porch, watching wildly in all directions.
It wasn’t good enough. The children would be making their attack at any moment--may have already started, in fact--and Tejohn had not yet driven the enemy from the field.
He yanked his right arm from beneath the fallen grunt, pulling the stinking, matted fur toward him. It smelled like old blood. The broken spear head came free, but the grunt lay against the side of Tejohn’s head now. He lifted the weapon and threw it in the general direction of the front of the porch. He couldn’t see anything, but the creatures were so packed together there, he thought he couldn’t miss.
The Way Into Darkness: Book Three of The Great Way Page 27
