Paul O Williams - [Pelbar Cycle 04]

by The Fall of the Shell (v0. 9) (epub)

  Fortunately, the Tusco had enough boats from High

  Tower to fit everybody. They consisted of twenty-two men, mostly builders, nine children, and eleven women, several quite old. Gamwyn remained wary of them, but Samme was amused. “Here we go to Threerivers,” he laughed. “The Lost One is picking up all his children. Not to mention chickens.”

  They shoved off next morning, their progress slowed somewhat by the weariness and debilitation of the Tusco. Soon they divided the peoples among the boats so there were no slow ones. After some initial hours of suspicious silence, Gamwyn thought he saw signs of friendships springing up between the Atherers and the Tusco.

  He also noticed that the farther north they went, the redder the bankside sumac became. Even the goldenrod was aging, and the asters powdered the woods’ edges with blue. He was worried about the cooling of the weather. How would Threerivers feed all these people during the winter? Some would have to go on to Pelbarigan, and even that city might have a hard time of it.

  After some days of paddling, and two rest days for fishing and hunting, they reached Jaiyan’s Station. This, too, had been burned, but they landed and Gamwyn called repeatedly. Samme blew his shell horn. Eventually nine old Siveri ventured out of the woods. They greeted Gamwyn with pleasure and relief, and explained about the Peshtak raid. They had successfully hidden. Then they had returned and buried the others.

  “We stayed,” one old man said with a trembling voice. “Nothin’ else to do. We just stayed around. They took Jaiyan and Jamin—and Misque.”

  “They took Misque?”

  “She weren’t around when we come back. We was in the river, hidin’.”

  “You’re sure they didn’t kill them?”

  “Not here. We looked all around, but we didn’t find nobody. Now. How about if we come with you? It’s lonely around here, and winter’s coming.”

  Samme again laughed. “Pile in. Plenty of room. Now, Gam, how many more settlements are we going to hit? We’ll have an invasion.”

  “This is the last. Unless we meet some Sentani. Or unless ...”

  “Unless what?”

  “We meet some Peshtak. That will be the end of it for us.”

  “Peshtak?” said one of the Tusco. “A large force?” He looked worried.

  “It could be. Let’s pray that doesn’t happen.”

  But the Peshtak were at Threerivers. Misque had rolled down the ladders, as she promised. Two at a time, men had climbed them with additional rolled rope ladders on their backs, silently fastening and unrolling them from the terrace lip. Misque had pointed out the guardsmen, and Peshtak had silently moved off for the kill but the third guardsman approached was able to cry out, and the Protector’s guard ran out of the Broad Tower, only to take an arrow in the stomach. He grunted and went down. The Protector opened the door behind him and screamed but managed to bar the door. Gind, holding the arrow shaft in his belly, could hear her -shutting and barring the doors. He sucked in his breath and let out a long shout, which was nipped off by another arrow through his chest. He rolled back and lay still.

  “You promised,” Misque hissed as Annon came over the wall. He knocked her down with the back of his hand, then reached down and hauled her to her feet.

  “Now. You’ll tell us how to get into the heart of this place.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t kill them.”

  Annon took her by the throat. “I’ll kill you, too, in a wink, if you don’t tell us.” He dropped her and she fell in a heap.

  Three guardsmen ran up the stairs and out onto the terrace, only to be cut down, and the Peshtak poured in through the door and down the stairs. It was dark. Somewhere a horn sounded, long and repeated. So the Pelbar were warned. There would be a fight. Four dark figures scuttled out of a side doorway. The Peshtak drew swords and hacked them down, screaming.

  “AH old women,” one said. They plunged ahead. The horn sounded again, and as torches came from above, the Peshtak found the way barred by stone doors. They called for rams from the shore, hauled them up, and began battering at the stonework. Fanning out through the rooms they had already seized, they found them deserted.

  Annon had Misque brought to him. “Now. How do we get beyond this?”

  “I—I know nothing of this. I didn’t know they could bar the stairs.”

  “Pah.” Annon knocked her aside. His sweating face burned, but he couldn’t get to it behind his mask. “We’ll batter it down, then.”

  Suddenly a wall slid aside, and four Pelbar bowmen quickly placed arrows into the nearest group of Peshtak. With a yell, a large party of the invaders dashed through the gap, chasing the Pelbar down a winding staircase, which seemed to narrow rapidly. Finally the point man could go no farther. He was wedged in by those behind him. He grew frightened and shouted. The crowd heard a rumble, as the stone roof folded in on them. Those at the head of the stairs saw only fallen rock.

  Annon screamed in rage. He had lost at least twenty men. The Pelbar would pay when he had finally taken the city. He would leave none alive.

  But morning saw little progress. The Peshtak on the ram were frazzled. They had made a deep dent, but the stone still held. Annon put on another shift. He had now brought his entire band, over a thousand people, up over the wall, and they occupied the entire upper section of the city, except for the Broad Tower, where the Protector and Dardart had taken refuge.

  Shortly before dawn, Gind, the Protector’s guardsman, had dragged himself slowly and silently around the Broad Tower to the message-bird cages. Tearing off a corner of his duty roster, he printed it with thumb marks of his own blood, and carefully tied it to a bird’s leg. Then he had released the bird, but in the darkness, it fluttered stupidly and sat on the roof of its cage, cooing softly in distress. Only at dawn, as some Peshtak approached, did it take off. They saw no significance in it, and only briefly glanced down at Gind’s staring, dead eyes with contempt. One spat on him. He continued to stare, unmoved, as the pigeon circled twice and set out for Pelbarigan.

  After another group of his men was caught in a wall trap, Annon went more slowly, building log cribbing over the heads of the rammers. Finally they breached the main-hall barrier, worming through the intertied cross wall, and advancing, gaming another level of rooms, only to have another roof peel loose on the heads of fourteen men, crushing them. Ahead, they found the hallway blocked again. They advanced the cribbing and set to work once more with a savage determination. When night fell little progress had been made. But Annon said, “We will get them out of here and kill every last hogsbutt of them. It’s just going to take time.”

  He summoned Misque and tried to get more information from her, but she offered little he didn’t know. Clearly she could explain the layout of the city but knew nothing of the trap system. Annon didn’t trust her. He had her thrown into a storeroom and guarded. She lay on the floor weeping because she knew now Annon would kill Jaiyan and his son when it suited him.

  Brudoer had been exploring the caves for some time, and was unaware of the invasion until, picking his way through the wall tunnels, he noticed that one of the wall traps had been activated. He heard faint pounding and knocking, so sought entrance to the city proper through a secret entrance to an unused room. In the dark, Misque heard a grating noise behind her. Suddenly a lamp appeared from the wall as Brudoer moved a portion of the wall aside. She crouched down, unsure of what was happening. The boy slid into the room and replaced the stone, then crawled across the floor.

  The lamp flared slightly on his face. “Gamwyn,” Misque gasped.

  Brudoer flicked out a long knife. He moved to her. “Who are you?”

  “Misque. You aren’t Gamwyn. You must be his brother. He said he had a brother.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “The Peshtak are in the city.”

  “The Peshtak! How did they get in?”

  “I let them in,” Misque whispered, sobbing.

  “You what?”

  A light flared. �
��Here. What’s this,” the Peshtak guard said. In an instant, he had arced his sword and Misque thrust herself in the way, taking on her forearm the cut meant for Brudoer but shrieking as it bit through her flesh. The Peshtak tossed her aside, only to receive Brudoer’s thrust through his neck. He dropped with a gurgle.

  The boy swung the door shut then stooped to the writhing girl, but footsteps neared in the corridor so he dragged first Misque then the dead Peshtak through the gap in the stone wall, went back, mopped away the spatters of blood, and slid through himself, again reinserting the stone and fastening it in place.

  “Ahhhh, ahhhh,” Misque moaned.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. I think your arm is broken. Can you walk?”

  “Yes. Yes. A little.”

  “Gamwyn. How is Gamwyn?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since late last winter. My arm. My arm.”

  “Come on.” Bradoer led her down through the wall passages, slowly and carefully. Finally she fainted, and he had to carry her down to the largest chamber below, where he bathed and bound the wound.

  She .murmured faintly, “Gamwyn? Don’t leave me, Gamwyn. You’ll never find your shell. You’ll never make it through Tusco country. Stay with us. Stay with me.”

  Bradoer looked at her in the flickering lamp light. More misery, he thought The main body of Pelbar, gathered in the Judgment Room, was steeling itself for the end. “Listen,” said War-ret. “They’re working on the last barrier between us. After that there are only two more we can retreat to. The first level has one, then the bottom levels. In any case, we are shut in already. We can kill a lot of them with the traps, but eventually they will get us.”

  “But what are we to do?” an old woman asked.

  “We’ll fight them, every arm of the way,” Pion said. “Every arm.”

  “If they’re going to win; then we ought to give up. Perhaps they will be merciful,” the same old woman said. Several others agreed.

  “You can give up if you want to,” Bival said. “Some of us won’t. You’ll just die sooner. What we can do now is to let them know there’s a price for what they do. We can set all the traps so they will continue to die even after they get all of us.”

  “This is the voice of cruelty,” another family head said. “Aven would not do that.”

  They heard running on the stairs. Two guardsmen appeared. “We’ll have to move,” one shouted. “They’re nearly through the barrier.” They ail rose and hurried out the south entrance. “Run,” a guardsman said, wiping the sweat out of her eyes. “We’ll harry them as they come through.” “You come,” Warret said. The guardsman started back toward the stairs, but Ason took her arm and dragged her through the door, growling, “We want to lower the barrier. You’d be trapped.”

  “It’s my duty,” she rasped. Ason paid no attention, hauling her along, his jaw bunched tight. From behind them came the first yells of the Peshtak as they broke through.

  Worming through the gap above, the invaders gathered a body of sixteen before they started down the stairs ahead of them, arrows nocked.. Suddenly the floor tilted from under them, and they dropped into a pit. The floor swung back up. It had all happened so fast there was no outcry. The next group of men also fell, but others saw the trap and bridged the gap with poles. When they swung the stairtrap down and cast a light inside, they saw the men below all impaled. Annon, when told, beat his fist on the wall.

  lust then a man came down the stairs and announced, “Command Annon, Misque has disappeared.”

  The Peshtak leader shrieked in his anger, swinging around. His face mask came loose, falling with a trivial clunk. He stooped to pick it up, as the men around him saw a raw-flesh-covered skull revealed. Hardened as they were, they froze in horror. Annon replaced the mask. This was followed by a small silence. “Just wait,” Annon said. “You’ll get to look like this. It goes with being Peshtak. Now. We’re going to take every closet and every cabinet in this sinkhole, and kill every Pelbar, mouse, and roach in it. Get going, hogsnouts!”

  The Peshtak moved with caution, knowing now that the city itself lay in wait for them with its interior traps. They were a full day breaching the next barriers, and even so found another in front of them.

  “It seems to lead down to the lowest levels of the city, Command,” one man told Annon. “I think we have them now.”

  From the wall above a long horn sounded. The Peshtak sentries had seen two large ships arrive from Pelbarigan, full of guardsmen. “Let them come,” a squadleader said. “They won’t get in here any easier than we did.”

  As they watched, a small boat left one ship, and three men came ashore. One was a Peshtak, who came across the forefield to the wall and looked up. “Let me in,” he called. “It’s Osel. The Pelbar have an offer.” They tossed him a rope ladder, and he slowly climbed it, panting heavily as he swung over the wall.

  He sat puffing. “I’ve been in prison. Out of shape.” “What’s this offer?”

  “The Pelbar say they can cure our disease. And prevent it. They say they will trade that for the lives of the Threerivers people.”

  The squadleader spat. “We’ll tell Annon.” He snapped his fingers at a sentry, who set out trotting. “What makes you believe that rot?”

  “I had it. The first signs. Right here. I don’t now. It all went away. I think they can do it. It’d be worth it to us. We could come back later and take the city.”

  “Do you know what bullgutted trouble we’ve had?”

  “I can imagine. It would still be worth it. You don’t have the disease. I can see. You don’t know what it’s like.”

  When the sentry told Annon, the Command paused. He was at a loss. He sent for Osel and listened. Then he shook his head. “It’s some kind of trick. We’ve come too far. We’ve lost too many men. And me. What of my face— people like me. Can they give me back my face? And all the others?”

  The men around him were subdued, and Annon felt their disagreement.

  “Shall I go back and tel! them this, then?” Osel asked. “You’ll stay here with us.”

  “I promised to go back.”

  “Dried hogskin. Let them chew on it.”

  “They said if I didn’t come back, they’d shoot anyone off the walls who showed himself.”

  “They can’t.”

  Osel summarized the defeat of his band in the winter. Finally, one man said, “Annon, it’s worth it. It would be worth more than anything we could get—”

  He stopped, holding his stomach, with Annan’s short-sword in it. The rest drew back, as Annon, flanked by his two personal guards, drew out the sword and wiped it on the leg of the victim. “Now,” he said, “we’ll finish with the taking of this city.”

  * * *

  As the sun set brick-red over the river, Ahroe leaned on the ship’s rail and said, “So Red isn’t coming back. I thought he would, really.”

  “Maybe they wouldn’t let him.”

  “Maybe. We still hold the bottom level. See the signals?” “And the foundation level underneath as well, guardcaptain.”

  “What is there?”

  “Prison rooms, ice, a water pit, mushroom culture, storage.”

  “What trouble they’ve had here.”

  “And are having, guardcaptain. It’s only a matter of time now until the Peshtak have all of Threerivers.”

  “So unnecessary.” Ahroe pushed the hair out of her face, her eyes brimming. “We can still pray. Something may still happen.”

  Inside, the Peshtak finally breached the bottom-level barrier, leaving only the city foundation as a refuge for the Pelbar. As they gathered there for a last stand, they heard pounding behind them. They turned. “Are they there, too?” one woman asked.

  “No. It comes from the cells.” Warret trotted off and found Brudoer looking through the door bars of the fourth cell, beating on the planks with the hilt of his long knife.

  Warret swung the heavy door open. “Bru. How did you get there?”

&
nbsp; “No time. Quick. Get everybody here. We can get out this way into the tunnels.”

  “Tunnels?”

  “No time. You’ll see. Get them.”

  In a few moments the Pelbar were filing into the cell and crawling through the hole into the small room and the tunnels behind it. They were amazed, unbelieving.

  Finally Brudoer shoved the square stone back into place and dogged it down. He turned to see Bival staring at him. With a small cry, she embraced him, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. What do we do now?”

  Brudoer worked his way to the front and led them all to the small room in which he’d left Misque.

  The Ursana immediately set to work on her arm. Others were furious, knowing now that Misque had betrayed them.

  “Don’t harm her,” Brudoer said. “If she hadn’t taken that cut, you’d all be inside now, awaiting your deaths.”

  “If she hadn’t let them in, we’d all be safe in bed,” one woman replied, drily.

  “Enough,” Brudoer said. “If you want to get out of here, I’ll get you out. But not if she isn’t taken care of. She knows Gamwyn. She helped him. That’s enough for me.”

  “For me, too,” Pion said. “Come on, son, we ought to move on before it gets light.”

  As Brudoer led the group through the tunnels, Osel slipped over the wall high above. Soon the Pelbar on the river heard the splash of his swimming, and he came up over the side. “They won’t agree,” he said, panting. “I think some would. But Annon won’t. He’s too angry. He’s lost too many men in there. And he’s too far gone in the disease.”

  “Then why did you come?”

  “I agreed. And I’m afraid. That whole place has the feel of death.”

  Inside, Brudoer was whispering to his father, asking him to lead the Pelbar across the field to the river. He would follow last. It was important. He would need Ason with him.