He took pleasure, too, in sharing the struggle. Some fifteen men or more were working, digging down into the hard earth at the village’s entrance, all at Yulan’s direction. Watching them, he could see the long days of just such toil that their bodies remembered and had shaped themselves to. They wasted no effort, wielded their tools as precisely as the Free ever wielded blade or bow. It was an honest kind of battle, this, Drann thought, and he enjoyed it as he had never done before.
He listened to Yulan and Hamdan while they fought that same battle alongside him. They were grieving.
“You remember that time Wren laid honey in Kerig’s trews to seed them with burn-ants while he slept?” Yulan asked.
“I remember his howling. He reckoned his manhood was going to cook from their stings.”
“He’d not let anyone make such mockery of him as she did. You remember what he was like before she arrived? There were those too scared to smile at him sometimes, case he took it into his head to knock their teeth out.”
“She was good for him,” Hamdan nodded, straightening for a moment to wipe sweat from his brow. “The old Kerig had his uses, though. Helps to have some frightening folk around now and again, when you’re plying our kind of trade.”
“Oh, we still had Akrana. You don’t think she’s enough when it comes to softening folks’ bowels with fear?”
“Her and what’s in the cage,” Hamdan grunted. “It’s enough.”
They fell silent for a time. The rhythmic plunge and scoop and heave of digging was the only sound.
“She was one of the best of us,” Hamdan said eventually. “She was one of the ones not running away from anything, not breaking under any weight, not kept awake with nightmares. She wore it more lightly than most of us. Having her around made it rest a bit lighter on all our shoulders.”
“I think so,” Yulan murmured. “I think she did that for us.”
Plunge, scoop, heave.
“I hope she killed Sullen,” Drann said, surprising himself as much as anyone. He had not meant to speak.
“With all my heart,” Hamdan grunted.
“He’s not easy to kill,” Yulan said darkly.
The grinding and groaning of overburdened wheels made them all stand tall, and look over towards the point where the Old Threetower Road began its ascent of the escarpment. A hundred paces from the nearest cottage in the village, Drann guessed.
Rudran and his men were helping a handful of villagers haul handcarts loaded with stones from the little ruin at the far end of Towers’ Shadow. They would be added to the barricade of timber and rock that already all but blocked the road just as it started to rise. That was the core of Yulan’s intent, Drann had more or less gathered without being explicitly told. Block the road, hold the village next to that blockage. That way, Callotec could not flee with the Bereaved for the Empire, should the day go against him.
One or two of the stones on the carts being laboriously wheeled along were odd. They had a rusty red hue that marked them out from the rest. It was too even and distinct to be natural.
“What’re the red stones?” Drann wondered aloud, not particularly expecting any answer.
“Sorentine lintel stones,” said Yulan without pausing in his labours. “Red and yellow were their favourite colours. Painted the lintel above pretty much every doorway of any consequence red.”
“They really were a miserable, soulless lot, the Hommetics, weren’t they?” Hamdan mused. “No spirit to them. Look at what the Sorentines did. Livened up executions with their pools, splashed red across their every doorway. Paraded bulls through the streets, and danced with them. Festivals of fire, songs of the sun. They had flair, if nothing else. A bit of life.”
“That’s the way things go,” Yulan said. “Make city merchants with roots no deeper than four or five fathers back, like the Hommetics, into kings and you get a petty kingdom of avaricious cheats. No ambitions or creed beyond their own continuance, getting rich along the way. Make a wild, ancient clan from the hill valleys, like the Sorentines, into kings and you get something with maybe too much spirit to it. Not sure everyone who was around back then enjoyed it quite as much as you think you would have. They’d probably have thought a bit of dull avarice tremendously appealing by comparison.”
“Well, I’ve not much more ambition or creed than my own continuance, getting rich along the way,” sniffed Hamdan, “but dull’s bad. Don’t care what anyone says.”
They had refound some measure of levity, Drann thought. He did not understand why, since each passing moment brought closer something that could be nothing but terrible, but from the moment they’d walked into Towers’ Shadow, the sombre darkness had lifted a little. From Yulan and Hamdan, at least. Not gone entirely, but eased. The nearest he could come to an understanding, and it was no real understanding at all, was that they were, for the first time since he had met them, in some sense where they wanted to be.
And here he was with them. That, as the first day at Towers’ Shadow came to its end, was the part of it he least understood.
33
The Second Day At Towers’ Shadow
The second day at Towers’ Shadow dawned bright. Yulan watched from the top of the Kingshouse’s keep as the sun came up. The place was in a bad state, worse than before. Nothing remained but silence and empty rooms and bare stone walls that had clearly been shedding ever more of their fabric in each of the last few years.
Up on its hillock, the keep caught the sun before the village below. Its stone glowed, as if welcoming the day’s return. Yulan closed his eyes, and savoured that first touch of warmth upon his face. He missed the heat of the south, he realised. He had once spent much of a winter in a village where the sea’s shore was girded by ice, almost as far out as the eye could see. He had slept, years later, two nights in a hole cut from snow, halfway up a mountain. None of it had taught him to appreciate the cold.
He missed the flat ground, the vast skies thick with stars at night, heavy with the sun in the day. The feel of sand under his bare feet. He felt more clearly than he had done in a long time, standing there on the Kingshouse at Towers’ Shadow, that he would like to go back to the place where he had been born. That he could go back there, perhaps. One day, but it would not be soon.
The Kingshouse provided a splendid vantage point. Slightly too far from Towers’ Shadow and from the road to be of any use in what was to come – Callotec could pass it by, even if Yulan had twice the men to garrison it – but by far the best perch for surveying the ground.
What Yulan saw did not fill him with confidence. Nor did it invite despair. They had done what they could, with the time and hands they had, and fortune would decide all else. Fortune and perhaps the Clamour. Fickle, the pair of them. You could only cast what bones you held, though, and he had cast them. He had done his best to be worthy of Wren and the others who had died, and would yet die. It was not enough, would never be enough; but it was all he could offer now.
The road, at the point where it angled up to climb towards the towers, was heaped with rubble and brushwood. No way past there, for wagons or horses. Pits and ditches had been dug, covered over with staked sheeting or wattle panels, and then disguised with a strewing of dirt and dust. Everyone – Free and villagers alike – was where Yulan had placed them. Nothing more could be done. The waiting was the burden now.
It would be brief, it seemed, for he saw Hamdan galloping in along the road. The archer was bent low to the horse’s neck, urging it on with arms and legs. Yulan hurried down through the desolate keep, and out through the Kingshouse’s gate. He trotted down the long slope towards the village, and Hamdan must have seen him, for he veered off the road and came cantering to meet him.
Yulan took hold of the panting horse’s halter, and raised his eyebrows expectantly.
“An hour at most,” Hamdan said. “Must have been marching in the night, brave lads that they are. They’ve learned a little. Almost all their horses are out wide and well ahead. I’d say you�
�ve got about thirty lances and swords coming straight at you up the road. Back of them, Callotec and Kasuman and the Bereaved with all the rest on foot. Not too far back, but far enough you might have enough time to lay out thirty dead for them as a welcome gift. If you’re quick about it.”
“Quick as I can,” murmured Yulan, already running for the village. “Quick as I can.”
No room for remorse or grief or doubt now. Not if he was to make the deaths mean anything at all. Not if he was to shield Towers’ Shadow against what was coming. There could only be clarity of thought and deed now, until it was done.
Back on the desert’s edge, if there was a lion the people wanted to kill, they baited it in with a goat. Sometimes with a runt foal, though that was less common. Lebid was the bait goat today. They dressed him in peasant’s garb, and set him on the least impressive of their horses. Its hide had been smeared with filth, its mane and tail tangled with the stuff, but its essential nature – bred and trained, strong and well fed – was only blunted, not truly hidden. If anyone took a sharp-eyed look, they would know it for something more than a roving brigand’s mount. Hopefully, no one would have the chance to sharpen their eyes quite that much.
The archer sat underneath a lonely spreading tree, out at the roadside. He was making a passable imitation of a sluggishly somnolent deserter from one army or other, sitting with his back against the tree trunk, his legs stretched out and crossed. The horse was cropping some yellowed grass. It looked as though there were a few tiny dark finches fluttering about and squabbling in the branches overhead. That, Yulan thought, was a nice flourish for the world to grace his illusion with. Another delicately placed semblance of calm and normality.
Yulan was peering through a knot hole in the planked wall of one of the small barns. Up high, on the platforms where the hay and feed were stored. It let him watch over the roofs of the cottages and huts. The first rider he saw was up on the very ridge from which he and the rest of the Free had descended the day before. Silhouetted against the sky, no detail distinguishable beyond the fact that he carried lance and round shield. An Armsman, who took up post there and did not move. Yulan could imagine what thoughts must be running through the mind of that distant dark figure.
He would see a man asleep, or at least lazing, beneath a tree. He would see one or two villagers moving to and fro amongst the buildings. Only men, for Metta had led the women and children hurriedly away into hiding somewhere north along the foot of the escarpment. Nothing, hopefully, to alarm. Nothing to draw him down. Yulan needed to catch as many of Callotec’s van in this snare as he could, and that meant no solitary outriders acquiring a sufficient excess of curiosity or courage to spring the trap themselves.
Another hint of movement took his eye up to the Kingshouse. A second Armsman had arrived there, riding slowly round the outer wall. Staring up at the windows and battlements of the keep, no doubt. Satisfying himself that no one was lurking within. So satisfied, the rider drew his horse to a halt and sat there, just as the first did, watching village and valley and road.
Careless, thought Yulan. If he was one of the Free, that man would be tongue-lashed for not getting inside the Kingshouse to see its emptiness from within as well as without. It was a good sign. Perhaps they thought they had slipped the noose, now that the towers stood there before them. Callotec himself would not be so complacent, but his weary, frightened men might easily convince themselves of a relief so strongly desired.
Yulan realised that his lips had dried a touch. He licked them, though there was little enough moisture to be found anywhere in his mouth.
He could hear them coming now, even through the walls of the barn. That faint, familiar clopping of hoof on road. A lot of hoofs. Lebid would be hearing them too, but he was doing the right thing and not giving any sign of it. Yulan spread the fingers of his sword hand, stretching them. Bunched and unbunched them.
The first of the vanguard came in sight. Riding half a dozen abreast at a fast walk, in loose array. The villagers would begin to doubt themselves and their chances at the sight of such horses, such martial finery, Yulan knew. It did not matter. The Free could dispel that doubt, given the chance.
Lebid was stirring, casually uncrossing his legs, brushing his hands on his breast as he got to his feet. He shaded his eyes from the sun to stare at the approaching company. Nicely done. The boy might have made a fine mummer, if he had lived his life another way. Had Yulan not known better, he might himself have been gulled into thinking this some ragged wanderer or bandit woken unexpectedly from his doze.
The lancers were closing steadily. Lebid mimed alarm, and took up his bow with an ungentle haste that befitted nervousness. Only one arrow was needed, and he loosed it quickly. A shot that would have set Hamdan fuming at the ineptitude of those he had trained, were it not just as it was meant to be. The arrow arced gracefully out, vaulting across the distance between Lebid and the horsemen, and clattered harmlessly amongst rocks off to one side of the road. Faultless.
The lead riders heeled their horses on, and came cantering. More anger than fear, which was just as Yulan wanted it. He needed the rest – or most of them, at least – to follow, though, and for a few moments it did not look as though they would. Then Lebid was scrambling up on to his own mount, and dragging it round to race for the village. That got all but a few of the lancers interested enough to come after him. Yulan set hand to hilt. He tested his grip upon the strappings of his shield. He could hear those few villagers who had been making a show of themselves running for shelter.
Lebid came pounding up the track and over the tiny causeway that divided the village’s ditch. Another couple of long strides from his horse, which had Yulan clenching his teeth in apprehension, and the archer pulled the animal up into a long leap at just the right moment. The landing was good, the rhythm unbroken, but Lebid went only a little way deeper into the village before contriving a more or less convincing fall, half sliding, half flinging himself off to the side and thumping down on to the ground. He really did have potential, that one, if his occasional carelessness did not kill him first.
He was slow to rise. He lifted himself on to hands and knees but went no further. Yulan saw him glancing surreptitiously back between his own legs to see how his pursuers fared. Just as poorly as anyone could have hoped, it turned out.
The first couple of Armsmen thundered in, and did not jump as Lebid had jumped. Their horses went down through the hidden woven mats and into the freshly dug trench beneath. Yulan knew there was grief to be had in this reflection of what Wren had done to these same men just days ago, but he could not allow himself to feel it now. He would not.
Two, three riders were thrown from their mounts. Another fell as his horse veered and stumbled to avoid the suddenly revealed pit. Those who came behind had the time and ground to adjust their path as they entered the village. They flowed around the hole where men and horses were floundering. And found more secret pits, on either side, that caught them as well.
Lebid sprang up and loosed an arrow that set a man rocking in his saddle, before sprinting for the nearest of the cottages. Atop other cottages, on either side of the track, more of Hamdan’s bow boys appearing, having been hoisted up there by village men. They knelt on the roofs, and began to calmly pick off those Armsmen who remained outside the village’s ditch. Within that ditch itself, two of Rudran’s own lancers suddenly appeared, throwing off the sacking and dirt that had concealed them. They had spears bought from village folk, and tried to set them in the belly of any horse within reach.
Yulan turned and dropped softly down to the barn’s hay-strewn floor. He looked at Drann, and then at the thirty or so villagers standing behind him. They had spears, and forks and hammers and scythes. They had nervous eyes.
“It’s time,” Yulan said, then lied: “Half of them are already dead. We need to go fast, if we’re to share in the winning.”
He threw open the doors of the barn and ran, not looking behind to see how many followed him
. He could hear, from their cries, that enough did.
Yulan and his motley band ran from one side; Rudran and his last handful of lancers came pounding from the other, bursting out from the second barn further down the track. Few of them had lances any more, but with shields and flailing maces they still made for a fearful pageant. The sun had come just high enough in the sky now to catch their helms, their mail.
If he could, Yulan wanted to get round the side of the disordered Armsmen, to come to the aid of his two men in the ditch. They were the ones most likely to pay for his ambition with their lives, exposed as they were, but he had thought it essential to stymie any easy retreat for those he had ambushed. He could not get there yet, though.
There were still horses struggling and rolling about in those pits, and men with them, but others had worked their way around or jumped across. Several were already forming up into a rank ahead of Yulan. Caught, thankfully, by indecision over whether to charge ahead, into the village, or try to break out over the main ditch. Yulan rushed them, roaring, hoping that Drann and the villagers would follow.
One of the Armsmen sprang out to meet him, lance dipping and aiming for his chest. He had his shield up to cover his ribs, but that was a meagre sort of defence. At the last moment, once the Armsman had enough pace up to make changing direction difficult, Yulan rolled forwards and sideways, passing beneath the very muzzle of the charging horse. It was dangerous, since lancers trained their mounts to trample, not avoid, men at their feet, but he cleared those raking hoofs by the narrowest of margins and rolled into a crouch, slashing the horse’s flank and hindquarters as it galloped past. He heard it crashing into, and falling amongst, the rabble running up behind him.
More lances were already coming at him. Rudran came rushing in from the side, and barged them away, hammering at them with his great mace with frenzied violence. Yulan ran on, into the heaving mass of horse against horse. He paused as he passed one of the trenches to cut down an unseated Armsman who was trying to climb out. Another, who had already dragged himself from a pit and was limping back the way he had come, loomed in front of him and Yulan punched the boss of his shield into the back of his neck. He jumped over the man as he fell.
The Free Page 29
