Stillbright

by Daniel M Ford

  Tibult grabbed the flagon of ale he’d provided and shuffled off into the night, keeping the wall hard to his left and making for the main gate.

  “Smart woman, that one,” he muttered. “Attack at outlying positions first t’draw men away from the center and then go in force at it.”

  * * *

  “What in the Cold is going on?” Allystaire paused, drawing Torvul, the boy, and the woman into the alley between shuttered shops. There was shouting, the clash of men, the indistinct yell of crowds.

  Idgen Marte appeared behind him, bundles of cloth in her hands. “What’s going on is the distraction that’ll allow us t’make the gate. Take this.” She held out one hand and Allystaire took from it a Delondeur soldier’s cloak.

  “What did you do,” he asked, even as he threw the thing over his bare shoulders, glad of something else to wear besides a blood-stained tabard.

  “Spread rumors. You know how soldiers are.”

  “What rumor?”

  Idgen Marte passed out similar cloaks to the rest of the party, though she didn’t bother with one herself. “Just something that’ll keep the gate guards occupied.”

  “Idgen Marte—”

  She began to wave the rest of them after her, but stopped. Turning back to face him, exasperated, she said, “That the Baron means to start a winter campaign. That any man still in the city come dawn—”

  “Oh Goddess,” Allystaire breathed. “What have you done? They will riot. They will burn the city.”

  “Well,” Torvul drawled, “they’re not playin’ at bowls just now. But I don’t see too much aflame.”

  “I needed something to get us out. I needed something we could hide in. I had no idea you’d find a way to get safe passage, and that’s even if it would’ve worked!”

  Allystaire scowled and punched his balled up fist into his free hand. “Men will die.”

  “Men die every day,” Idgen Marte shot back. “How many did you kill today? We needed a way out.”

  “Those are not the same. We do not make those kinds of compromises,” Allystaire spat.

  “You don’t,” Idgen Marte said. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “Enough!” Torvul’s gruff voice cut through the chatter while the woman and the sorcerer’s apprentice looked on, one fearful, the other simply unnervingly observant. “We are getting out. Now. We can argue over it later,” he said, then pointed a finger at Allystaire, “and you’ll lose. Now go.”

  They filed out of the alley. A hundred yards ahead, a dark mass of men was visible in the light of torches and impromptu campfires, pressing forward into the massive gatehouse that led through Londray’s outer curtain wall. Some campfires had been kicked over and the embers spread about, but Allystaire, for once, appreciated Lionel Delondeur’s rigidly enforced edict about the distance between his city’s outer walls and the houses within them, for no nearby building had gone up.

  Green-cloaked men were in a frenzy to get over the wall. Many had simply gone through the gate by main force, but when that had proved too much of a bottleneck—or perhaps had too much resistance, for the sounds of struggle were audible—some had begun lowering ladders from the inside, and others swarmed up to the top.

  From what Allystaire could see, the fighting was mostly fist-to-fist. With Idgen Marte a presence in his mind just a few steps in front of him, he drew his borrowed cloak more tightly around himself, extended his hand and clamped it around the woman’s, and plunged into the crowd.

  * * *

  Tibult made decent speed from one camp to another, but even had he two good legs, he’d never have moved at the speed of rumor. Soldiers were the worst gossips he knew.

  By the time he’d left the first camp, men had been pushing towards the wall in a standard-issue angry mob, waving fists and torches but no steel that he could see. But when he’d found the newly forming mob at the main gate—the stronger, better defended gate—he saw frantic green-cloaked soldiers prying cobbles from the road, knives drawn from belts, making cudgels out of tent poles. He felt a cold pit in his stomach. There’d be blood this night, and it’d be upon his hands.

  Wouldn’t be the first time, he thought, followed quickly with, It would be the first time they were my own brothers of battle.

  It surprised Tibult to know that a thought, any thought, could still sicken him. “Freeze it all.” He hobbled over to a torn-down tent, picked up a broken length of tent pole by the flat end, and, using it as a cane, started pressing backwards through the crowd. Let that woman keep her friends and her gifts and promises, he thought. It can’t have been worth it.

  * * *

  Not long after they plunged into the crowd Allystaire had its measure. The men surging for the city gates weren’t facing much resistance, it seemed, but such a mixture of anger and fright was upon them that they believed they were. City guard uniforms, with their distinctive green caps, made men targets.

  He saw men wounded, bleeding, falling. He didn’t see any dying but he was certain there were deaths. Such was the pace that Idgen Marte set for them, clearing the way with her Goddess-given speed and the flat of her blade. It was a mad press of bodies, and his muscles screamed, aching with the aftermath of the Goddess’s Gift.

  Even so, he pulled the woman and the boy in front of him, and Torvul instinctively moved in front of them. The dwarf was not shy about employing his cudgel, and many a rioter who ventured too close for his liking was soundly thumped on the back of the knee, or sent sprawling with a casual twist between his ankles. Where one man went down, others were sure to follow. Slowly, Allystaire realized,

  Torvul was making his own contribution to the clearing of their path. Of a mind to help, Allystaire clenched a fist, but all the strength had fled his arms, and his hand shook.

  Faith, he told himself, as he realized that he was simply in their hands.

  * * *

  Where is that damn cripple? Idgen Marte winced the instant she had this thought. Tibult. His name was Tibult. She moved through the crowd with an ease afforded the Shadow of the Goddess. Men might bump into her, and many were diverted from her path with the flat of her blade, but none saw her clearly enough to make trouble, and when they did see Torvul’s cudgel or Allystaire’s clenched fists behind her, they made way.

  He probably couldn’t punch wet paper just now, she thought, glancing at Allystaire and reading in a moment, from the set of his jaw and the slight hitch in his gait, how quickly he was reaching the point of exhaustion. Still, he pressed on, his green Delondeur cloak and stolen tabard conspiring with the darkness to more or less hiding the fact that he was mostly nude and smeared with a startling quantity of blood.

  Suddenly she caught a glimpse of a man pushing raggedly against the tide of men that surged towards the gate. A man pushing himself along using a broken stick for a cane.

  She started through the crowd towards him, flinging a quick thought back to Allystaire and Torvul as she went. There he is! Try to wait!

  She ignored Torvul and Allystaire’s complaints as she began slipping through the crowd. She was soon at Tibult’s side, startling him for the second time by seeming to appear out of thin air.

  “No time to explain. My friend who can help you is in the crowd. Come!” She could feel Allystaire and Torvul moving away from her, being pushed by the half-mad crowd. She grabbed Tibult’s free hand and began the arduous task of fighting through the mob.

  * * *

  Allystaire was buffeted, almost taken off his feet, as soon as Idgen Marte stopped clearing the way for them. The Goddess’s strength had fled, and it was slowly being replaced with a fatigue he couldn’t stop. We need out of this city, Torvul, and fast.

  Idgen Marte has got a project, the dwarf thought, stepping forward only when forced by the press of men, and occasionally whipping about with his cudgel.

  They had to move, though, and Allystaire
knew that even in top shape he wouldn’t have been able to stop it. The crowd was too many, too mad. Bodies pressed on all sides. Pace by pace, they were being shoved ahead, away from Idgen Marte, who was making her way—much more slowly—towards them.

  The gap between them widened. Drowsy-eyed, wine-addled, and crazed green-clad men kept appearing out of nowhere, swelling the crowd around and behind them. The gates must have been opened—there was suddenly loud cheering ahead, a roar that spread through the mob, and the pace of the crowd increased. They were swept along, forced to keep up for fear of being trampled.

  Allystaire! Her mental voice sounded strained, though not quite frantic. I can get out fine, but the man who helped us. He needs you!

  Torvul groaned and began pushing through the crowd, wielding his cudgel like an oar. Allystaire, still trying to shield the boy and the sorcerer’s captive with his arms, while trying at the same time not to lean on them too much, looked for Idgen Marte. He saw her pulling a tall, broad, limping man along behind her, the two of them shoved side to side by the knots of men running for the gate.

  Why? Allystaire had barely thought this before Idgen Marte’s answer shocked him into action.

  He’s a veteran. Lamed. Was going to throw himself into the Bay!

  “Take them to the gate, Torvul,” Allystaire bellowed. “We will come behind!”

  Gathering whatever strength he had left, Allystaire plunged into the crowd, swinging his elbows aggressively, knocking men aside.

  Had he his normal strength, much less the Goddess’s Gift, he’d have knocked them off their feet. As it was, they barely made way for him.

  Idgen Marte drew closer, guiding the man towards Allystaire. Allystaire offered his left arm, stretching it as far as he could. He heard Idgen Marte yelling at the man to grab Allystaire’s hand. The veteran didn’t hear or didn’t comprehend. Allystaire stretched, throwing himself across an escaping soldier. His fingers brushed across the veteran’s neck. He reached for the Goddess’s Healing.

  Allystaire had only the briefest moment to assess the man, his wounds, his life, what he could draw on to heal him. There were memories of battle, of stabbing downwards from a horse, of feeling a mount founder on the stones and the terror of it going out from under him. A plunge into water so cold it felt like the shock alone would kill him.

  Then there was pain, a huge red cloud that overwhelmed everything, then slowly receded—but not entirely. It was constant. Not overwhelming, but never less than a strong distraction, something that could be dulled, but never mastered.

  Allystaire knew pain, but not like that, pain that could never, ever be ignored. He knew the shock and terror of losing a mount. He drew on the shared experience, poured the Goddess’s empathy into Tibult, felt it seize and begin to reshape the man’s mangled leg and hip. The healing was always a shock to the recipient, and he felt the other man stiffen and cry out as the Gift of the Goddess began to wipe the injury of years away.

  And then a surge of the crowd, a gaggle of latecomers running for the gate, green cloaks billowing behind them, smacked into Allystaire. He felt his feet momentarily leave the ground, and he was left with little choice; he could go along with them, try to make the gate, or he could be trampled.

  He tried to fix on the man’s face in the moments he was pulled away, the fires that burned nearby brightening the night enough to make out some details—the shock in the big, broad face, the hope that might’ve been flashing in his sunken eyes.

  And then Allystaire was gone.

  * * *

  Idgen Marte saw Allystaire get torn away from her and Tibult, and knew there was only one decision she could make. She thought to drag Tibult with her, but she needed speed now, and they all needed out of the city.

  Some of the Goddess’s words to her on the day she’d been Called echoed in her head. Without you, my Shadow, he will fail. Without you at his side, he will fall. There are dangers he will never see, the Goddess had said of Allystaire. It is my hope that those dangers will never see you.

  She turned to Tibult, shouted. “Thornhurst! Find us there whenever you can, bring as many of your fellows with you as you wish!” She reached into her purse and pulled free a string of silver links, pressed it into his hand. “Thornhurst!” she shouted once more, then vanished. As always when Idgen Marte employed the Goddess’s Gift, the world slowed around her. Light and dark came together in her vision, picking out the pockets of shadow as far as she could see; all color and most other shapes melted away unless she concentrated. While acting as the Shadow, all she could easily see were the shapes of the shadows themselves. There were many, with the firelight, the stars, the shouting, running masses of men, the looming walls. Her sense of precisely where Allystaire stood was unerring, like a beacon to the rest of her. With a single step, a single impulse, she was beside him, wrapping her arm beneath his shoulder.

  Then the world moved again. Men shouted and pressed around her. Allystaire was a heavy weight at her side. Her blade was in her hand in a flash—a little bit of her speed, a little of the Goddess’s. Her Gifts were amazing and powerful, Idgen Marte knew, but she took some pride in just how much of the speed of her draw was her own, and not the product of divine gift.

  Bared steel gave men something to avoid, and the progress had carried them within sight of the inner gate, leading through the barbican. The greenhats and soldiers who’d had the guard of this gate had long since given up trying to hold back the tide of men, as all the gates and ports stood wide open, men streaming out of them.

  She knew Allystaire seethed at her side. She also knew he hadn’t the strength to argue. She half dragged him into what was now less a mob and more a rough but genial queue and flowed with it towards the plains and the night beyond.

  * * *

  Londray emptied itself of most fighting men as night rolled into day. They streamed out onto the plains carrying whatever they could, weapons, food, tools, wine, pay, plunder.

  Most importantly, they carried tales of how close they’d all come to a forced winter campaign. Tales of how the Baron Delondeur had proven willing to sacrifice their harvest, the work needed to make their boats ready for winter, for his own glory.

  What good did a larger barony do anyone if there was less food for more mouths?

  So when rumors trickled out over the coming days that the Baron himself had been imprisoned in his tower, and that his own bastard son had taken charge of the capital for the winter, there was no immediate influx of loyal soldiers and knights ready to return Lionel Delondeur to his seat.

  * * *

  Torvul had been waiting for them outside the gate, his lantern bright in his hands, the woman and the sorcerer’s boy standing safely beside him. Outside the walls, the crowd could and did disperse in all directions.

  “I took my wagon, your mounts and our baggage out to a hostelry and inn a couple of miles up the road while the two of you were playin’ at usurpation and civil unrest,” he offered wryly, as they approached out of the crowd.

  “What makes you sure that the place won’t be burned down or looted?” Idgen Marte asked. Allystaire disentangled himself from her arm and stood apart. His knees wobbled once, but he slowly pulled himself upright.

  “Faith,” Torvul said, “in my ability to read people. Not to mention how I’d hate t’be the looter who tried to pry open my wagon or steal his horse,” he added, gesturing towards Allystaire with the lantern. “Lose a hand either way. Mayhap a deal more.”

  He walked closer to Allystaire then, extending the lantern. “Going to make it a couple of miles, boy?”

  Allystaire took a deep breath. Deep, aching pain was settling into his muscles. Such was the price of the Gift of Strength, he knew.

  “I want nothing more than to lie down and sleep,” Allystaire admitted, wearily. “Yet the work is not about what we want, is it? I will carry on. I have no choice.” Another deep breath,
trying to draw strength from the very air back into his muscles. “Lead on.”

  Chapter 7

  Tasks

  They were, Allystaire believed, the longest two miles he’d ever walked. They felt every step of twenty, with painful fatigue dragging him towards the ground at every step. Halfway there, Torvul offered up a flask of something. Uncharacteristically, he took it without asking, had a swig, and felt a brief flush of energy flow into his limbs.

  That rush faded quickly, though. So quickly that Torvul grumbled incomprehensibly in his native language and had a sniff at the flask himself.

  Allystaire ignored the dwarf’s gimlet eye. He had no attention for anything but the setting forward of one foot after another, the brute forcing of it. The pain was shoved aside along with every other thing that might otherwise have preyed upon his mind: the crippled veteran he hadn’t finished healing, the riots, where they were going, how to get there, how to guard the woman, the boy. What the boy meant, who he was. Allystaire had suspicions.

  Or he’d had them, before life had become one step. Then another step. And another.

  Idgen Marte, who’d ranged ahead as they walked, reported knots of green-cloaked men here and there, fleeing the city in all directions, some halting as the energy of the mob began to desert them.

  She began to ask him a question, something about cutting branches for a litter. He waved her off with a curt gesture, and grunted out a single word. “Ardent.”

  “Your horse?”

  “Get me to him. Sleep in the saddle.”

  She nodded and disappeared again, only to return in moments and confer with Torvul, their words reaching his ears only distantly.

  “Men with bows guarding a cluster of buildings ahead.”

  “That’ll be our innkeep. And his sons, I expect,” Torvul said.

  “How d’ya know?”

  “What did I say about faith in my ability to read people? And, ah, to read the insignia on the matching tabards they’d all hung on the wall. Baron’s Own Bows, or so it said. Seems to be the first stage of the family business. Followed by the inn, of course.”