Spinner held his staff at the ready. He stepped halfway through the doorway and looked both ways. The door opened into a corridor that appeared to run the length of the building from front to back. No one was in evidence. He stood in the middle of the corridor and listened. He heard nothing from inside the building.
“Let’s find a way to the roof,” he said.
CHAPTER
FOUR
They glided silently through the building and up its stairs to the roof. The place felt eerily like it had been unpeopled for longer than human memory, though the lack of dust on the floor, except where it was caked thick in the corners, indicated it was occupied regularly and had been used recently. In the top floor of the building, ladder rungs built into the wall of a storage closet led them to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
Spinner climbed up and unlatched the trap. He eased the door up, looked out, and found the flat roof he’d hoped for. He climbed through and motioned Haft to follow. Together, they lay flat and breathed a sigh of relief at the clear, unoppressive air of the roof. But they only rested for a few seconds.
They looked about. A low wall stood above the front and two sides of the roof; the back had no barrier guarding against a sheer drop. To the back, toward the middle of the city, they could see roofs as high as or higher than the one they were on. Many of the roofs were flat. No guards stood watch on any of them. They saw only sky to the front and sides; nothing in those directions seemed to be higher than the building they were on. Staying below the level of the wall, they crept to the front and peered over. In the distance were close-packed trees that appeared to climb rising ground, but the restraining wall was too wide for them to see anything nearby.
“This is no good,” Haft muttered and stood up. “That’s better,” he said.
Spinner sat leaning against the wall and cringed at thought of the guards on the city wall seeing Haft.
Haft stood casually, as though he belonged there and had every right to be on that roof. He knew that someone who looks like he belongs is almost never challenged. Quick glances to the sides told him theirs was indeed the highest building along that stretch of the city wall. Looked up at from the street, he’d be silhouetted against the bright sky, and the observer would see his uniform shirt and probably not be able to make out his fair complexion and red hair.
“We might have a problem,” he said when he looked beyond the city wall.
“What?”
“Well, I don’t see a moat or palisades or any soldiers outside the wall, but the forest is almost a mile away. We wouldn’t be able to reach it before horsemen could run us down.”
“See, I told you we needed to find out what was on the other side of the wall before we went over it.”
Haft ignored that and continued observing the area. He saw how cluttered the military lane was, with shanties against the city wall and vendors’ stalls on its inner side. In some places the shanties and stalls almost completely blocked the lane, so no more than two people could pass at one time. The guards on the outer wall were at fifty-pace intervals for as far as he could see. A gate a quarter mile distant was guarded by at least a squad of Jokapcul soldiers who seemed to be carefully inspecting the slow procession of people, carts, and animals passing out. They allowed no one to enter the city. He was looking for a way over the wall when he heard a jangling of metal and a guttural halloo from the lane below.
Spinner, still below the restraining wall, realized a sergeant or officer saw Haft and was demanding to know what he was doing there. Spinner started looking for a fast way off the roof.
Haft managed not to flinch at the unexpected call. He pretended not to hear it and continued to look around.
The guttural halloo came again, with a sharpness of anger to it this time.
Haft continued casually looking around until his moving eyes seemed to naturally look down. He hoped he was right about the bright sky disguising his complexion and hair. He feigned surprise at finding someone standing below, calling to him. He could see the man was a sergeant from his uniform. Rectangular metal plates linked with iron hoops armored his shirt, and metal-studded gauntlets protected his hands and wrists almost up to the elbows. In place of the peaked cloth cap worn by more junior men, he wore a peaked helmet, slightly flattened front to back. Haft assumed the three black cloth stripes slashed across his chest were rank insignia. He wore a short sword on his belt.
The sergeant barked and growled and made gestures in the manner of all sergeants of all armies. It sounded and looked like he was asking what Haft was doing on top of that building and demanding that he come down. Evidently, this building was in his unit’s area and he knew he hadn’t stationed a guard on it.
Haft pointed to his ears and shrugged elaborately.
The sergeant bellowed something that had to be, “What do you mean, you can’t hear me?” He knew his voice was loud enough to be heard all the way from one end of a parade ground to the other.
Haft pantomimed being clouted on the ears and shrugged apologetically.
The sergeant snarled in disgust. He took a deep breath to calm himself then used a series of elaborate gestures that concluded with his finger sharply pointed to the ground at his feet.
Haft held out his hands and shook his head emphatically. He splayed three fingers on his left chest, mimicking the insignia the sergeant wore on his own—and fervently hoped he was right about it being rank insignia—then pointed to himself and, just as emphatically as the sergeant had pointed to the ground in front of him, pointed his finger at his own feet. My sergeant ordered me to stay here and not leave for any reason, his gestures said.
The sergeant huffed and puffed and went red in the face. Then he roared something. He gave Haft a last glare and stomped away down the military lane, the rings on his shirt jangling against the metal plates.
Haft watched him for a moment, then dropped down behind the wall. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to stay here any longer,” he said weakly. He was almost hyperventilating.
“You’re right for a change.”
Spinner led them scuttling back to the trapdoor. Inside, Spinner ducked into an empty room and opened his pack. He stripped off the stolen shirt and put his own back on.
“Change,” he ordered.
“Why?”
“If you’d been wearing your own uniform, you wouldn’t have been dumb enough to stand up where that sergeant could see you.”
“But if I hadn’t stood up I wouldn’t have been able to see what was out there.”
Spinner didn’t answer; he knew Haft was right about that. Still, he thought they’d be more cautious and therefore safer if they were dressed in their own uniforms.
Haft didn’t say so, but he agreed that caution was the better course of action—especially now that they knew what was on the other side of the wall—and also got out of the enemy shirt.
This time they explored their surroundings from the top floor of the building. A window on the side they’d come in from showed no one in the alleyway below. There were no windows on the other side of the building; the adjoining building shared that wall. A window to the rear was mere feet above a roof that abutted the rear of the building they were in. They saw less from the front than Haft had seen from the roof. Except . . .
Where they weren’t smack against each other, the shanties against the wall had middens between them. Some of the middens were more than half as high as a man was tall, and some were piled as mounds standing almost free of the city wall rather than sloped screelike against it. It might be possible for a man to hide behind them and not be seen from the lane.
“We could hide there until dark and then go over the wall,” Haft said, pointing at a midden that had space between it and the wall.
Spinner looked at it and grunted. “Unless a guard on the wall looked down. He’d be sure to see us.”
“We could pull the top of the midden down on us, to hide us from view.”
Spinner simply looked at him. He
was repulsed by the idea of being covered with other peoples’ rubble, rubbish, and garbage. He said, “We’d make a lot of noise covering up now and getting uncovered again after dark. Someone would hear it and we’d be discovered.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Spinner didn’t.
“Then let’s do it.” Haft led the way back down to the second floor office through which they’d gained entry to the building. Spinner followed, protesting Haft’s idea all the way but unable to come up with a better one of his own.
The alley looked as empty as before, and they only heard the sounds of a few passersby on the lane beyond it. The faux balcony hanging by one end blocked their view of whatever might be directly below it, but that blind spot was barely large enough to hide one man—it certainly couldn’t conceal a Jokapcul squad waiting to capture them.
Haft eased himself over the sill and slid down until he hung by his fingertips, then let go. He dropped only a few feet and, even though he stumbled when he landed, managed to stay upright. He heard a grunt and a gasp so close together they were almost simultaneous. The grunt was from Spinner when he landed next to him. Haft pulled his axe and spun toward the hidden space below the hanging balcony, which was where the gasp came from.
“No, my lord,” said a thin, old man’s voice. “Don’t hurt me, I mean no harm. I’m merely an old man with weak water.” The old man looked as thin as his voice, and his body was bent and sagged with its many years. His garments were so old and patched they seemed to be more rags than clothes. He hurriedly closed the front of his pants. A small puddle glistened next to the wall near his feet. Then he saw how the two men who had so suddenly dropped in on him were dressed and drew himself erect. He rendered an old man’s clumsy salute.
“My lords, you are not them!” he said in a stronger voice—and they could hear the emphasis when he said “them.” “You have come to drive them away? I will help you. I will do anything I can to help you expel the invaders.” His body resumed its old man’s slump.
Spinner stepped back and peered deeper into the shadows of the alleyway, looking for others. He didn’t see anyone. “Who is with you?” he demanded.
“No one, my lord,” the old man answered. “As I said, I’m just an old man with weak water. I came in here alone to release the pressure so I wouldn’t embarrass myself in front of other people. But”—he now spoke in a firmer voice—“I know many people who want to fight them, to drive them from our fair city, which hasn’t known war in more years than the oldest person in the city can remember.” He cleared his throat. “Certainly not for as long as I can remember, and I may well be the oldest living citizen of New Bally. One of the oldest, at any rate.” Now that he was over his initial shock, the old man was becoming gregarious. “I don’t think anyone in the city wants them here. Unless they come as traders. Certainly no one wants them here as conquerors. New Bally is prosperous as a freeport, but if we are a vassal city, we will be poor, and no one wants that.”
Haft had to stop the old man’s rambling. “You say you will fight?” he asked haughtily.
The old man straightened again and looked at Haft levelly. “I may no longer be able to wield a sword in the manner of young, strong men such as yourself, my lord. I cannot lead a charge into the massed ranks of the enemy, nor will I be a member of our own massed ranks repelling and assaulting. Nonetheless, there are yet things even a bent old man such as myself can do to aid in a battle.”
Spinner thought of what the old man had said. He said he could help them. Maybe he could. He said to the old man, “Are there many in the resistance?”
“My lord, all of New Bally will arise when you make your attack. We citizens of this fair freeport ask only guidance to coordinate our fight with yours.”
“Good. We are a reconnaissance. We have seen much of value to our army’s attack. Now we must return and give our report to our general, but we don’t see a safe way out of the city. Can you help us?” He almost hated himself for giving the old man false hope, but if they got out of the city, they might actually run into a counterattacking army that would need what they knew about the Jokapcul in New Bally. He put a hand on Haft’s arm to keep him from giving away his ploy.
“Uh, that’s right,” Haft said. He hadn’t needed the warning to realize what Spinner was doing. “We’re a special reconnaissance force for the whole army.”
The old man’s eyes glowed and he grinned broadly, exposing snaggled teeth with gaps between them. “You can’t get out during the day,” he said. “You have to wait for night. But I can hide you until then and show you a hidden way to the forest.”
“Good. Where do we go?”
“Follow me.” The old man scuttled, bent over, deeper into the alley, his head swiveling furtively from side to side as he went. At first Spinner shook his head at the sight of the old man moving in a manner such as an old man might imagine soldiers move when they were on a secret patrol. Then he realized the old man looked as though at one time he might actually have known how to move unobserved. He wondered about that.
Haft was wondering the same thing. He said, “Do you think he’s leading us into a trap?”
Spinner shrugged. “It could be. But we can’t stay here. If he’s telling the truth, he’s our best hope of getting out.”
Still, they hesitated to follow him. Until they heard the tramp of marching feet approaching on the military lane.
“That sounds like your sergeant coming back with a squad to relieve you,” Spinner said.
“Yes it does,” Haft agreed.
They quickly followed the old man into the depths of the alley. They walked erect and swung their weapons casually, but were ready for action, just in case the old man was collaborating with the enemy—or in case the approaching soldiers entered the alley before they were out of sight. Just as they reached the end and ducked into a barely shoulder-wide passage the old man had disappeared into, they heard the squad come to a halt. A sergeant barked commands, and the sounds of running feet told Spinner he’d ordered them to secure the building.
They had to duck and weave and sidle as the old man led them through a warren of alleys that were often little more than narrow spaces between buildings and garden walls. They darted across streets and thoroughfares when no one was looking their way. As he clambered and hopped over obstructions in his path, the old man proved far more agile than his wizened appearance suggested. The deeper they went into the maze, the more certain Spinner and Haft were that the old man was exactly what he said—someone hoping to be rescued from the Jokapcul invaders—and they relaxed their vigilance. It wasn’t long, though they had become hopelessly lost, before the old man disappeared into a doorway they couldn’t see. They groped blindly for a few seconds, found the opening and ducked through it themselves. A door thunked shut behind them and light suddenly flared up.
The old man, his body still bent, his grin still wide, rubbed his hands in glee.
He cackled. “They’ll never find you here,” he said. “The only way to know this place exists is to come the way I led you, and no one can do that unless he knows the way, and there are few who do. No one will show them the way. You’ll be safe here until night, and then I’ll show you a way out of the city.” In the light of the room, he was able to see Haft’s axe clearly for the first time. He stared at it for a long moment, then drew himself fully erect, into a surprisingly proper military posture of attention. His grin disappeared and his hands stopped washing themselves.
“My lord,” the old man said in a firm voice, “I have not seen the rampant eagle in many years. I did not know anyone still wielded such a weapon. I know if the rampant eagle is nigh, the invaders will soon be driven from this fair city.” He gave Haft a courtly bow.
Haft looked at him, puzzled. He glanced at the eagle on the face of his axe, then looked at Spinner. Spinner was looking back, just as puzzled.
Haft cleared his throat. “Yes. It will happen soon. Perhaps sooner than the enemy thinks.” He
didn’t think he sounded very convincing.
The old man looked deeply into his eyes, a touch of uncertainty in his own, but didn’t comment on Haft’s tone. Instead he asked, “Have you had food?”
Haft’s stomach growled—they hadn’t eaten since the previous night’s dinner.
“You wait here, I’ll bring food.” The old man opened the door a crack and flitted through, shutting it securely behind him.
“What was that about your axe?” Spinner asked. “The old man thinks the engraving on it means something special.”
Haft held it out and looked carefully at the eagle on the blade. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It hung over the mantel in my home my entire life. My father said his father carried it when he went off to war as a young man. That was all he ever said about it. I played with it when I was young and playing at soldier. When I ran away, I took it without asking my father.”
“Was your grandfather a hero in a war?”
Haft shook his head again. “My grandfather died in a hunting accident when I was an infant, so I never heard anything from him. My father never talked about the war his father was in. I don’t even know what war it was, or in what army he fought.”
“Maybe the old man will tell us more about it when he comes back.”
Haft made a face. “The way the old man reacted to it, I don’t think it would be a good idea to let him know we don’t know what the eagle means.” He stared at the rampant eagle on the blade of the axe and wondered what significance it held that he didn’t know about. He remembered the odd looks the axe occasionally got from other Marines, but none of them had ever said anything about it to him.
Spinner nodded and didn’t say anything more about the axe.
They looked at their surroundings. They were in a small room—Haft could almost touch both walls with his outstretched arms, and it wasn’t much deeper front to back. The light came from an oil lamp in a wall sconce. A rag-covered pile of pine boughs against the back wall served as a bed. A small table against a side wall held an ewer and bowl. A metal plate and cup hung from pegs on the wall above the table. A small chest tucked under the table looked like it was meant to be pulled out for use as a stool. The bare dirt floor was swept clean.
Demontech: Onslaught Page 5
