Blackdog

by K V Johansen

  Koneh the cook, a distant Battu’um sept kinsman, met her at the side door of the caravanserai, the one that let into her father’s house. “Are you sure I shouldn’t come with you, Mistress ‘Rusha?” he asked. “I could keep watch, at least.”

  “The fewer involved the better,” Jerusha said. “Especially if it goes badly.” She hefted the sack he handed her. It felt heavier than it had when they packed it. “What else did you put in?”

  “One of those Northron saxes. You can’t wear a sword through the streets, but you shouldn’t be out without a weapon.”

  “And if they search me?”

  Koneh raised his brows.

  “Right. I take your point.” If a patrol caught her and searched her, she was dead anyway. “Firepot?”

  “That’s really a bad idea.”

  “Flint and steel could take too long.”

  “I should come with you. Let me carry the firepot.”

  “Two people are more likely to be seen. The only reason you’re involved at all is because you snuck up on me this morning.” While she was packing the things she thought she would need.

  He didn’t mention the tears she had been shedding as she packed. Jerusha held out a hand. “Fire, Koneh. You’re not coming.”

  Koneh shrugged and handed her the squat crock. It was hot to the touch, good, the coals it held still smouldered. Its handle was a short chain looped through thick pottery lugs. Koneh had wrapped the chain in rags, though it wasn’t hot. Maybe to keep it from clinking. She turned to leave, wrapping her dark scarf over her face. “Lock the door behind me, but make sure someone’s waiting here and at the gate.”

  She felt, rather than saw, Koneh roll his eyes. The whole household, save the few allowed to sneak out to the meeting at Sera’s well, would be watching and waiting by the gates.

  She knew he watched her until she left the narrow alley for the dark street.

  The plan had been cobbled together during the day, born of equal parts coffee and desperation and elation. She had imagined Attalissa sweeping from the mountains to liberate them all, Sera riding at her side, if what Attavaia had told her was true and her goddess had not died. She had not imagined a wild hawk of a mountain hunter who had never even been to Lissavakail, let alone a real town, come god-driven and carrying a stone, without Attavaia’s knowledge or blessing.

  At least Attalissa might be in Lissavakail soon, godhead and the Blackdog erupting in wrath even a wizard as great as Tamghat couldn’t face, once she was back in her own rightful place. Attavaia was probably about to be flung into her own long-brewing uprising, and Great Gods grant it was better prepared than Jerusha’s. She had meant her revolt to follow that of the mountains, had meant to join with the Lissavakaili as they scattered Tamghat’s folk behind their wrathful goddess. She had not meant to take the lead, knowing her own goddess weak, if not dead. But instead Attalissa was…she had played backgammon with the girl. And lost, true, but lucky dice did not make a goddess.

  Faith, have faith. The mountain uprising was coming. She had to do what she could, here and now, and not be left behind. If the mountains were not prepared—there was nothing Jerusha could do about it. There was no delaying what would happen, what must happen tonight. Sera had come back to them, beyond all hope. They could not sit and wait and send messages asking foreigners, did they think it was the right time? Elsinna seemed dazed and god-driven; trust her words were Sera’s will. Or a Tamghati trick to draw out the last loyalists? Jerusha had considered it, after Elsinna had collapsed exhausted in her bed, where she had slept the rest of the night away, oblivious of death and abduction, of the goddess, of miracles and wonders. She had slept through the day, too, while Jerusha, acting as though she believed, made her arrangements. But there was something about the woman…truth, and anger, and the same intensity, blind to all other beings, that she had glimpsed in Holla-Sayan a time or two, and now knew the root of. So something drove Elsinna down from the mountains, and chance blew by like a leaf on the storm-wind. Snatch it now, or lose it forever.

  Jerusha knew the alleys, the places where walls were crumbling and she could scale them, or climb to a roof and travel without ever coming down to the streets. The greatest danger would be that some fool had been taken on the way to the well and even now was telling the governor’s people that something stirred this night.

  The market square was the usual nighttime empty, wind-whining space, a litter of the day’s debris: dung, spilt fodder, trampled vegetables, feathers, chaff. The wind whirled what was dry into sand-drifted corners. People had died here, not yet a full turn of the stars since. A mounted patrol emerged from the dark mouth of a lane opposite just as she left the shelter of a doorway. Jerusha froze, then moved slowly backwards.

  “Quiet tonight,” a voice said. That was all. They rode past—of course they picked her very street, and a horse turned its head, snorted. Northron mercenary. A native Serakallashi or a Grasslander would have reined in at once and searched the shadow. She breathed softly through her mouth until the dull pad of the hooves had ceased to float back to her. Then she slunk once more into the market square, more cautiously, this time, edging along the wall. Chaff, broken dungcakes—the very poor came gleaning fuel here, but they would come before the edge of dawn, not now when they would be taken for curfew-breaking—dust, summer-dead weeds…if last night’s storm had left too much sand…Jerusha knelt in a corner, heaping up by feel the driest rubbish. She used the hem of her coat to shield her hand, taking the lid off the pot. A handful of long straws made a taper of sorts, kindled against the coals, and she slid the burning straws into her modest pile of tinder, blew on it gently, watched the flames grow. Then she moved on and did it again.

  She set small fires all around the market square. And oh, the plaster of the Chiefs’ Hall, now the Governor’s House, was cracked and flaking at the southern corner, exposing the fabric beneath—mud brick, yes, but part of a wooden post as well. Jerusha smiled and set her last fire there.

  And she had not blown herself up yet, so there, Koneh.

  That came now.

  She opened her sack, buckled on the sax. What remained were tubes of hollow bamboo, fixed to long arrowshafts. She hoped the Over-Malagru caravaneer who brought them for her had known what he was talking about when he explained how they worked—he claimed a sister had married into the trade. Nabbani fire-tubes were a secret art even in Nabban. They’d better be worth the price she’d paid.

  Jerusha had got them for Attavaia, but she had kept four, thinking some way of rousing the town at once might someday come in useful. But neither she nor Attavaia had dared test even one. It wasn’t, by all accounts, something you could do quietly. If they all failed…well, at least the fires would be noticed before long. Smoke was already rising to smudge out the stars and catch in the throat. Damn, but she’d forgotten the square was paved, beneath the dust and sand. The first tube she tried to set up fell over. And she could feel the heat where she was, too close, too close. Jerusha moved further away, feeling the weight of the sack on her shoulder like a live thing waiting to bite. She had tied tight-twisted hemp rope to the fire-powder-impregnated fuses which led spark to the alchemical mysteries within, because she was not about to set them off while standing by. If her ropes didn’t burn, though…well, the fire would reach them in the end. She could hope. If it wasn’t found and put out too soon. She wedged the blunt tip of the sax between two stones and rocked it, widening a crack in the fill, tried again, and the tube swayed but stayed upright, pointing roughly skyward. She led the hempen string off to one of the bonfires, moved on to the next. Her hands shook with her haste and she jammed the last two in together, coming to a sudden decision. Great risk, maybe worth it. But she had to act before the fire-tubes woke the town, and she did not know how much time her fuses, long as they were, could give her.

  There was a warehouse next to the Chiefs’ Hall, where once Siyd Rostvadim’s father had stored the Marakander goods he dealt in. Now it was a granary, a storeho
use of tithes extracted from the so-called bond-folk who worked what had once been lands of the septs for the governor, and for Siyd Rostvadim and the others who had grown fat on Governor Ketsim’s scraps. It was never guarded by native Serakallashi, the conscript militia was not trusted so far. Usually it was the Lissavakaili conscripts…certainly every time she had gone by during the day, there had been a bored Lissavakaili boy sitting whittling on the roof.

  Jerusha ran, not bothering with concealment, for the ladder that led to the second-floor door. They hadn’t pulled it up. The lower door was heavily barred from within, of course, and they wouldn’t open that for any knocking, even if they heard it. But this upper door would open into a loft, where once upon a time some kin-servant’s family or unmarried sons and daughters might have lived, guarding the family goods. Jerusha tapped lightly at it, then pounded with her fist, an eye on the young flames below. No life in the fire-tubes yet.

  A narrow slot in the door slid open at eye-level. “What?” someone demanded tersely, and Jerusha let out a breath. She could see nothing, but the accent belonged to the mountains. “Great Gods, the square’s on fire!” he added, turning away. “Ring your bell—”

  “No, don’t!” Jerusha said. “In Attalissa’s name!”

  That gave them pause. She heard silence, and breathing. Two or three of them, crowding close.

  “Did the governor tell you why he left, last night?”

  “Why should he?” Sullen.

  “You heard some of your comrades were killed?”

  “Not our comrades. Serakallashi killing Serakallashi.”

  “Oh, right, and you aren’t all Tamghati soldiers? Didn’t it strike you as odd that you weren’t turned out to execute random folk on the street in revenge? That’s what usually happens when one of you lot gets murdered, isn’t it? Did you see the bodies? Did they let you see the bodies? Or was it Tamghat’s own noekar and mercenaries who dragged them all off to a pit in the desert before the sun was ever up?”

  The silence was interested. Good.

  “They tried to stop the Blackdog on his way back to the mountains,” Jerusha said. “You can guess what was left of those poor children—folk of Serakallash and no more wanting to be the Blackdog’s enemy than you. Attalissa has returned. Your goddess is on her way to Lissavakail right now. You’re not little children who grew up with the Lake-Lord’s lies; you know she was never carried off by any demon, you know that she fled Tamghat, to grow into her strength in hiding. Well, now she’s back. And are you going to be standing with the Tamghati, when the sisters and the militias that have been preparing in secret all these years rise up in your home valleys?”

  Something in the square below was sputtering sparks.

  “The Old Lady of the free temple, and there is one, believe me, sent me with a message. Leave now. Get your brothers from the barracks and head back to your mountains. Because our goddess has returned as well, and you don’t want to be in Serakallash as our enemies in about…now.”

  Great Gods let it not burst right here in the square, into what it was meant to be, a pretty flower of flame. Real signalling fire-tubes such as the Nabbani emperor’s soldiers used were not something her Over-Malagru caravaneer had been able to get for any price.

  With a hiss, the tube was gone. Jerusha caught herself, braced against the door. A sound like thwump, and a red peony of fire burst high overhead. Then bangs, and red stars drifted slowly to earth. Another thwump, no bang. Blinding white light. Then nothing. Two fuses had failed. Not quite so impressive as she had hoped. But even the one cluster of bangs was enough, a sound such as they had never heard.

  Dogs barked and bayed. Serakallash was awake.

  Rattle of chains and bars and the door jerked open. Jerusha tumbled in, landing on hands and knees.

  “We’ll be killed,” one voice was still protesting. “He’ll execute us like the girls after Ishkul Valley.”

  “We’ll certainly be killed if we stay here,” said the one who had answered the door. “You heard her. Attalissa’s come home and the Blackdog’s going ahead of us.” He gave Jerusha a nod, almost a bow, stepped over her, and scampered down the ladder.

  “Damn it…” But the reluctant one was shoved forward by the third, and they both scrambled down and ran, heading for the lane that led to the Lissavakaili barracks, which had once been the Battu’um Hall.

  Jerusha picked herself up, rescued her firepot, pulled the door to behind her, and felt her way across the dark room. The very air tasted of dust.

  The loft room opened onto others. Thin window-slits too small for a child to slide through let in the faintest starlight. She found by feel that most of the rooms held sacks and jars of grain, even up here. Sera damn him, this must be most of last summer’s harvest, hoarded here, while the farming folk eked out their meals with burdock root and wild onion, and their babies fell sick and died. Out on the gallery that ran around below the roof and the stairs descending to the main floor she had to feel her way again. The great space was partitioned into bays along a central aisle. Touch told her that bins lined the walls, baskets were stacked high, and storage jars. Some were greasy-slick. Were the fools stockpiling oil here, too? It took a lot of theft to feed Tamghat’s vast mercenary force. The main doors were locked as well as barred, but her fingers found the key standing in the lock. She turned it, heaved the massive bar free, almost more than she could lift, and pulled the door open a crack, letting in the dim firelight and smoky air and a babble of voices. Ignoring them, she walked back to the centre of the warehouse, took the lid from her firepot, and whirled it on its chain. The coals flared to scarlet. She let the chain go, watched it a moment, soaring to land in a bin, coals scattering.

  She waited long enough to see that it caught, good wheat serving a better end than fattening Tamghat’s folk, and then slid out the great door, leaving it ajar.

  Outside, the market square was transformed. Men and women ran shouting with jars of water from private wells, or stood in anxious clusters, checking over their shoulders for Tamghati patrols. No one had thought to sound the alarm bell in the tower of the Chiefs’ Hall yet. There were watchmen who lived in the remaining private warehouses and the masters who lived above their workshops, and those who were staying in the several sept-halls that overlooked the square. And, of course, the people of the governor’s house. No, that door was still closed tight. Did Siyd, the governor’s deputy, mean to lurk in hiding while others took charge? Not she. She was dressing herself, not to look so much a fool as all these folk in shirts and blankets.

  Divine will, or fate such as the Northrons believed. Jerusha went up the steps to the Chiefs’ Hall door, and waited. Waited. Damn Siyd, was she going to simply sleep through the crisis? The pitiful rubbish fires would be put out at this rate, without the alarm ever having sounded. No, there was that exposed corner of the former Chiefs’ Hall and somehow no one seemed to be carrying water to that. A few nudges, a few people looking, turning away not to see. But that spread too slowly within the wall.

  Red light spilled from the doorway of the granary, and a roaring that could not be ignored. People turned, almost slowly, to look. The sensible few headed for the opposite side of the square.

  The clunk of a lock at last. A couple of Rostvadim warriors and a pair of Grasslanders, all fully dressed and armed.

  Siyd in the middle of them, scowling. Her hair was grey, now, and her face tight. Perhaps she did not find it so easy, keeping her own sept sweet in the face of greater and greater extortions, keeping her Tamghati masters happy.

  “Fools!” Siyd said, though whether she meant those trying to put out the fires, or those she thought had set them, it was hard to say. “Devils take them, what are they playing at? The hall’s on fire, don’t just stand there!”

  The last fire-tubes went off, some spark suddenly reaching them. They streaked crookedly, hissing, skyward, and burst with bangs and flowers and stars of green and white. People screamed and covered their heads, and more were appearing in
the square all the time.

  And while the bodyguard were all craning to look, Jerusha stepped away from the wall and swung two-handed at Siyd’s unprotected throat. She’d sharpened her knife special, but the sax was in her hands before she remembered, and it was sharp, Great Gods, but it was sharp, Koneh had put a good edge on it for her. Siyd’s head lolled stupidly sideways, cunning little eyes still staring, and her mouth gaped. So did her throat. No wizard or devil or whatever it was had come bringing miracles last night was here to save her. Blood spurted everywhere.

  “That’s for Davvy,” Jerusha sang, and her voice cracked. She leapt from the side of the stairs as one of the guard swung at her, shouting—they were all shouting, on the stairs and in the square. She landed badly, stumbled, but no one moved to grab her. The shouting was overwhelmed, briefly, by a thundering crash. The square was suddenly silent, frozen. Even Jerusha forgot to run.

  That would be the loft and gallery in the granary coming down. She wouldn’t have guessed the pillars and beams so weak, to fail so quickly. Dry with age?

  And all the grain-dust that would rise from the shattering jars and burst sacks…

  Jerusha ran and she wasn’t alone. But two of the men hard on her heels were the Tamghati Grasslanders. One tripped, was tripped, and never got up, someone stooping with a knife. A horse burst from an ally ahead and Jerusha raised her blade—Firebird. Koneh.

  He held out a hand, reining Firebird in snorting and plunging, and she scrambled and was dragged up behind him, clutching him tight.

  That other ride, another battle in the square, Sister Enneas holding her upright…

  “The well!” she screamed in Koneh’s ear.

  More horses swept out around them—young men and women, some she knew—Sera save, it was the Serakallashi conscript troop. Turned out to cut down the rebellion?

  “Don’t follow me!” Koneh shouted. “Clear out the damned Tamghati from the Chiefs’ Hall.”

  “It’s burning!” Jerusha shrieked. At least, it damned well ought to be. Now the bell began to jangle, not the alarm for fire, not the summons to an announcement by the chiefs, just a wild, broken rhythm, a peal of panic.