“Where’s Jagur?” Kadan asked a sergeant.
“Fourth tier, straight up. Don’t take these stairs.” The man jerked a thumb at the nearest spiraling steps. “The south ones aren’t taking the same beating. And watch the alleys.”
Catling tugged on Kadan’s sleeve, and they loped deeper into the tier. Ellegeans had deserted the main road, locked doors, and hung blinding curtains across windows. No sounds beyond those of war, of pain and shouted orders, found a path around the Founder-made walls. The clamor circled, coming from all angles, swelling and fading with the thunder of boots.
As they neared the tier’s center, the distance between the discordant uproars decreased. Catling followed Kadan from one littered road onto another, down an alley and back again, retracing their steps as the battle’s front lines stretched across the tier. Catling slowed to a halt. “We have to take a stand and help, or we won’t get through.”
“Next one.” Kadan slid a knife from his boot and offered the hilt. “We’ll influence from a distance and run if we’re no help.”
She stared at the knife. “I’ve never… stabbed anyone.” It was a lunatic thought to utter in light of her propensity for death, and her hand closed around the hilt. She ducked into an alley, frightening a family as much as they scared her. “What are you doing out here?” she whispered. “Go home and lock your door.”
“We can’t get there,” the man replied, crouched with one of his children by the wall. His bond mate held a baby in one arm, a boy’s hand in the other.
Kadan rapped his knife on a dark window and received no reply. He glanced at Catling and shrugged. “We’re about to announce ourselves anyway.” She nodded, and he yelled at the locked home, “Unbar the door for a family, or we’re breaking in!” No answer. Kadan twisted his wrist, ready to smash the window’s glass with his blade’s hilt when a door across the alley cracked open.
“Over here,” an elderly woman called, beckoning with a frantic wave. The family dashed into the home’s safety, and the door slammed shut.
A new clash exploded somewhere near enough to make out the threats and commands. Catling gulped a breath. “This one.” She darted toward the alley’s end and peeked around the corner. Two lanes down, a score of guardians rammed up against an equal force of Cull Tarr. “You bolster the guardians. I’ll strike the jacks.”
She stepped into the lane, Kadan beside her. Starting on the left, she picked out her first target, wrenching his knees with a brutal twist that would leave an Ellegean screaming on the ground. If it worked, her inflicted agony would incapacitate the jack and lend the guardian time for a kill. The man winced, and she moved on.
The next jack felt nothing, and the next glanced at her while throwing an elbow in a warrior’s face. The next crumpled with a cry, his toothless mouth gaping and toad-eyes bulging. The guardian blinked in equivalent shock and ended his enemy’s life.
The guardians rallied, soaring with Kadan’s confidence. Catling crept closer, seeking the Cull Tarr toward the rear. Two more fell, the rest immune or merely tweaked by her touch. She concentrated on those who responded to her pressure, throwing off their focus as her influence moved around their bodies.
Then the guardians fell to their knees, every one of them howling and holding their heads. The Cull Tarr used the opportunity to their advantage, launching killing blows in the moments the men were down. Catling slammed a shield over them, but the fight pivoted to the jacks’ advantage. The guardians who found their feet staggered, suddenly outnumbered.
Catling spun to Kadan, her hands curled into fists. “An influencer, another traitor. How many are there? What’s happened to us?”
“We have to run!” He clutched her arm.
“They need my shield,” she cried, backing up with him, the bleak outcome undeniable. “Where’s the influencer?” Whoever it was hid from view, and the Cull Tarr slaughter prevented her from getting near enough to search.
Voices erupted behind them, and Kadan spun. “Guardians this way,” he shouted and pulled Catling to the wall. She spared a glance for the charging warriors, men and women in greens yelling as they sprinted toward the Cull Tarr and last of their standing brothers. Kadan’s influence fired their blood, but it wouldn’t last. She needed to shield them too before the influencer struck.
“Focus on the Cull Tarr,” she shouted above the din. “I’ll shield you and the guardians, but I won’t block your power. Find the influencer.”
He loped forward as the warriors fought the jacks into a retreat. Catling held her shield while Kadan’s influence stabbed at the enemy, forcing them to flinch and stumble. He edged across an opening to an alleyway and spun. His target changed, pain and fear striking at something beyond her vision.
She saw the danger too late to stop him. “No, Kadan!” He stepped between the buildings, out of her sight, and her shield over him vanished.
“Kadan!” She dashed toward the alley and hooked the corner. He panted, slumped against the wall, holding his chest. “Don’t ever leave my sight!”
He grimaced. “I forgot.”
“Well, don’t,” she snapped, tempted to cuff him.
A woman in Guardian greens with a spatter of blood on her cheek leaned on the wall at the alley’s corner. “Influencers,” she called, “any chance you’d care to join us?”
Kadan nodded, and Catling hauled him up. They followed the guardians deeper into the tier and chased a few Cull Tarr stragglers up the spiral stairs into the blades of Nordin’s waiting force.
On the second tier, guardians surrounded a block of connected buildings that the Cull Tarr had transformed into a crude fortress. A monstrous fire burned in the roadway, the contents of a tavern—tables, chairs, cupboard, and benches, everything fashioned of wood—smashed and set ablaze. The air cooked and coiling smoke slithered across the underside of the above tier like an upturned nest of snakes.
Nordin stood near the fire, shouting orders, “Get this fire out! I want the tier secured and the buildings surrounded.”
“What can we do?” Catling asked, the heat stealing her breath.
The captain looked down at her, the hardness in his eyes softening. “Not much. This is their last stronghold on this tier. They’re holding slaves in the tavern’s upper floor.” He gestured at two bodies the guardians had dragged to a wall away from the flames, a smear of blood in their wakes. “They swear they’ll cut throats and toss their victims from the windows if we attack, and they’ve proved it.”
“Do they hold all the buildings around the tavern?” Kadan asked.
“Most of them.” Nordin wiped sweat from his forehead with a scarred hand. “We cleared one and stopped before they sent us more bodies.”
“Which one?” Kadan glanced at the fire. “I have an idea how we might rescue the Ellegeans without having to knock on the front door.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Treading softly, Kadan climbed to the inn’s second floor. The stairs ended on a landing at the head of a corridor, doors on the right and left. Another staircase descended at the other end. Before Guardian had rousted the Cull Tarr from the building, the jacks had wreaked their worst on the interior, the remaining furniture demolished and windows gutted.
He took a bearing and crept into a room that shared a wall with the tavern. Catling shuffled on his heels. He would have preferred that she wait with Nordin, but he’d have his hands full, and her influence would mitigate the panic certain to follow. She would insist on helping anyway, rendering his objections wasted breath.
Ten guardians stole in behind her; twenty more lined the corridor, waiting for word that Kadan had breached the wall. As soon as the slaves were free, the warriors outside with Nordin would break through the front door.
Several men collected armfuls of broken furniture and piled it by the wall. “That’s plenty,” Kadan whispered and sparked the fire. The warriors stood back as the tinder caught. He added pages of a book and splinters of what might have been a drawer. “Find us a few t
orches to speed this up, and smash any intact windows. It’s going to get smoky in here.”
He glanced at Catling. She’d watched him melt Founder-made walls before. Once in Ava-Grea, when they’d spirited Raker from Markim’s violet pool. He’d saved her from Algar the same way though he doubted she remembered. The weight of sorrow shadowing her eyes told him otherwise. He turned to focus on the fire and the lives waiting on the other side.
The flames took hold. He fueled the growing blaze and spread out the burning wood, increasing the heat’s breadth on the door. Two men returned with four torches. “Hold them to the wall about waist high. We need three long blades.”
The guardians who stepped forward brandished daggers as long as their forearms. He fanned the fire, building the heat. The larger the area they softened, the wider and taller the hole. The wall bulged and began to sag.
The room struggled to vent the smoke and heat. Sweat ran into his eyes, and he wiped his forehead on an arm. Several guardians coughed. “Quiet now,” Kadan whispered to the room. He grasped one of the daggers, gestured for a torch to move aside, and carved a quick fist-size hole. A glob of gray wall dropped into his hand, cool despite the appearance of melting. He whispered into the hole as it shrank. “Stay back and quiet.”
“Hurry…” The hole closed around the voice.
The torch returned, and Kadan added more wood to the flames. Guardians fanned the smoke into the corridor. He faced the room and coughed. “You saw how quickly it closes. When we cut, we cut fast. Keep the torches on the edges and three of us will work the knives. They’ll be frightened.”
“Four of us will go in first,” a lanky sergeant said. “We’ll get them to the opening, and you pull them through.” He selected the men who’d go with him. They lined up, eager to jump the flames.
“I’m going with them,” Catling said.
Kadan’s eyes watered in the smoke. “We don’t know what’s on the other side.”
“Frightened people who need to stay calm and quiet.”
“I need you out here, Catling.”
“No, Kadan, you don’t. Let me help.”
“She’s right,” the sergeant broke in. “We’ll jump first. She follows.” His gaze shifted to his warriors. “When they come through, escort them out of the building. Keep everyone moving. If we need more guardians, you’ll know it. Call for the assault the moment the Cull Tarr figure out we’re here.”
The decision behind them, Kadan poked randomly at the wall. It dimpled beneath the pressure, softened in an area high and wide enough for a crouched man. “Ready? Let’s go.”
His dagger stabbed through the sagging wall level with his chest. Two guardians sawed at the sides. Chunks globbed to the floor. He tore pieces away with his hand and slung them into a corner. Through the growing hole, he glimpsed a dim room, huddled adults, and terrified children. A large portion of the wall peeled away, smothering part of the fire, and a man towed it back, dragging the burning wood with him. Kadan swept the embers to the opening with his boot and added more fuel while the torches kept the edges soft.
“Guardians now,” he said, and the men working on the gap jerked back as four guardians jumped through. Catling cast him a sweet stroke of love as she followed, leaping the flames. Kadan sliced into the wall. “Keep cutting.”
The children appeared first. A pair of hands passed a toddler between the torches and sawing blades into the smoky room. Kadan grabbed the child and swung him back to the guardians. The tot cried, and he countered the unbridled fear with pleasure. Catling was right; they needed influence on both sides.
More children came through. Then five women. He carved at the gray wall. With every pause, the hole shrank, the Founder-made material rebuilding itself.
“Guardians!” a voice shouted from the other side, and the battle ignited. Kadan flinched back as more warriors jumped through the gap.
“Order the assault,” a woman in greens yelled, and the call traveled down the corridor. Beyond the wall, the clamor swelled.
“Catling!” Kadan yelled, and the opening shrank. He coughed and sawed into the flames at the bottom of the hole. His sleeve caught fire, and a guardian snuffed it out as Kadan peeled away another strip of wall. A blond woman and a matron with hollow cheeks stumbled through, the younger of the two screaming as her heel landed in the coals. A guardian hauled her out of the way, and three men followed.
“Catling!”
Two more men than nothing. Guardians used the lapse to leap into the room.
Someone shouted orders in the hallway. A guardian leaned in the doorway, out of breath and batting at the smoke. “Let it close. We’ve broken through below.
“Catling!” Kadan shouted through the gap. He spied her through the smoky haze. A wounded man hung on her shoulder, and she staggered under the weight. Behind her, a guardian fended off two jacks.
“Help him.” She pushed the man into the closing gap.
Kadan and a guardian dragged him through. “Catling!” he shouted, but she’d vanished in the smoke. The hole collapsed inward, contracting and repairing. He thrust his knife into the wall, carving at the edge that rapidly hardened. Sweat stung his eyes, and the hole knitted closed.
***
Jagur leaned on the rail, facing east, thankful the rain had surrendered to shunting clouds and spears of sunlight. Below in the delta, the fog retreated to the muddy wetlands. There it sat above the steaming peat like an audience at a life and death spectacle. Like gods.
What remained of the river ran low and fast, swirling around Elan-Sia. The ferries and carvirs navigated the shallow waters, but the deeper keeled vessels had cut into the muck and canted on their sides. Beneath the thin layer of luminescence the sleek waterdragons glided, fins extended like wings.
The goddess played with the currents and tides, drawing the water from the land. She gathered it beyond the breakwaters where the Cull Sea was a weltering mountain of murky froth. It roiled and heaved, bloated and rebellious, against the kari’s restraints. To his eye, it should be hurtling toward him, roaring back into the lowlands with a vengeance, not pitching and bucking like a wild beast. Above the wall of water, more fog drew up like a ghostly army.
The Sea God lay on her keel at the edge of the threatening storm. He wouldn’t mind seeing the ship smashed to splinters beneath the first crushing wave when that tempest broke.
North of the city, a dragnet’s sails blazed. Flaming arrows soared toward the furled targets on her other mast. Part of Guardian’s makeshift fleet clung to a galleass like foxes with their teeth in a crag bear. A battle raged on the slanted deck.
“The catapults are standing by, Sir.”
Jagur turned. A guardian waited by the staircase, anticipation bright in his young eyes. They’d discovered the contraptions during the first hours after invading the city, and he’d sent the closest things he had to engineers up to learn how they worked—not the overt operation, which wasn’t complicated, but the targeting.
He climbed the spiral stairs after the warrior. The Cull Tarr had built six catapults on the fourth tier’s promenade, all facing east. The arm on the huge devices stood as tall as two men and attached by ropes to a wide lath shaped like a recurve bow. A two-handled winch drew the arm back and down for the payload of rock that must have taken a hundred men a whole season to haul from the shore and up the tiers. He grunted, certain he beheld the labor of slaves.
“We’re ready, Commander.” A rotund man with a cleft chin stood by the loaded bucket of the nearest catapult. “Its platform rotates on a stationary base. We’re aiming for the galleass listing our way, the one where we see most of the deck. Not much of a challenge when they’re trapped in the mud. We only have to adjust for distance.” He patted the machine like a proud father. “We thought you’d like to witness our first attempt.”
Jagur faced the target. “Let’s punch a few holes in that hull.”
The guardians stood back, and the man pulled the lever. The arm exploded up and pounded into
the crossbeam, cracking like thunder. The whole structure bucked against the chains securing it to the tier, and the payload soared above the Cull Tarr ship, scattered, and fountained into the river.
The guardians cheered. Jagur inhaled at the machine’s power and silently thanked the goddess that the rainfall of rock wasn’t peppering Guardian’s fleet. If she hadn’t caused havoc with the river, his men would have coasted into a deadly barrage.
Men cranked the winches, making adjustments on all six catapults. They filled the buckets and waited for the command. On the galleass, the slanted deck streamed with people seeking cover, the Cull Tarr expecting a hit. Jagur would have ordered his men below or, worst case, abandoned ship, hoping for rescue before the maelstrom of water swallowed them up. He wouldn’t wait so blatantly in the open for death.
All six arms erupted upward, releasing their burdens of stone. The rocks arced through the air and smashed into the ship. They plowed holes in the fore and aft castles, splintered the deck, and snapped a mast. They pummeled the Cull Tarr, crushing bodies as they struck and cannoned across the deck. The sight turned his stomach, but this was war, and he intended to win. “Reload,” he ordered.
“Commander!” Nordin jogged toward him. Behind the captain, Kadan and Catling rushed up the stairs ahead of a score of haggard Ellegeans, some with children. A despairing wail rose as the ragged crowd gathered at the rail. “Commander,” Nordin panted. “Those are Ellegeans on deck, women and children stolen from Nor-Bis.”
Jagur’s chin retracted in horror, and he swung to the view just in time to see a payload of rock arc into the air from a dragnet, south of the wounded galleass. The tier shook and screams erupted. Shattered glass rained on his head.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The cold water stung. Luminescence retracted and swarmed him. A familiar feeling returned, a searing as liquid light entered his skin, fired through his veins, and merged with his blood. It was the sublime part of dying, a mystical communion of spirit with the whole.
Kari's Reckoning (The Rose Shield Book 4) Page 23
