by Ian Irvine
“What’s that?”
“Attack the enemy, right now, and defeat them. Then lead out everyone who wants to go.”
“That’s not my plan,” said Tali.
Radl knocked Tali onto her back with a blow to the belly she did not see coming, then put her foot on Tali’s chest, holding her down. “I’ve changed the plan.”
The blow had winded Tali. “Have you — ever — led an army — to battle?”
“Have you?” Radl retorted. “I’ve been planning a rebellion ever since they killed my man. This is the only way that has a hope of working.”
Radl thought for a moment, then removed her foot and offered Tali a hand. She took it and Radl lifted her to her feet. Tali studied the taller woman from under her lashes. She would never understand Radl, but if this was the only way to save the Pale, she would find a way to work with her.
“What’s the matter with your wrist?” Radl said suddenly.
“A bad wrench.”
Radl took it in both hands; her lips moved in a healing, and the pain eased.
“Thanks,” said Tali.
“I did it for them, not you. Once we’ve armed everyone,” said Radl, “we’ll attack the enemy in their quarters. Nearly everyone will be there at this time of night. If your magian can blast down the gates and kill their guards, we can take them by surprise. We’ll try to bring the entrance roof down with heatstone and trap them in their quarters. Then we can get everyone out.”
“It’s a better plan,” Tali said grudgingly.
Radl grinned. “Of course it is.”
“But the matriarchs could be issuing the death order by now.”
“Then we’ve got nothing to lose, have we? Lead the way.”
“Three thousand Pale aren’t enough to attack ten thousand armed enemy. Not nearly enough.”
“They will be if we can catch them in their beds. Come on.”
CHAPTER 94
The guard post was open, the guard lying dead inside. The Pale streamed out behind Tali, men and women both, barefooted and silent.
She led them along to the subsistery. Outside its grinning-eel-shaped entrance was an open assembly area, the roof of which was held up with a dozen slender, carved columns. It was about fifty yards by forty, barely large enough to accommodate the three thousand Pale who had followed.
Holm and Tobry were waiting in the service corridor beside the assembly area, with Tali’s pack.
“It worked, then?” said Holm.
“Not exactly. Radl’s taken over.” Tali explained the new plan.
“It’s better than the previous plan,” said Holm. “I can’t say I ever liked it.”
“Neither did I,” said Tali. She slipped her pack on; there wasn’t time to get dressed. She felt hideously self-conscious wearing only a loincloth in front of her friends, but arming the Pale was more important than her own modesty. “Any news?”
“Had to kill a few guards,” said Tobry. “No sight of a courier, though.”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” said Tali. “He could have come a number of ways.”
Tobry was looking better since he’d thrown up, though it aroused the old fear — if he’d thrown up the potion before he’d absorbed all of it, how long before the shifter madness rose again?
It was another pointless worry. She would keep an eye on him and be ready to use the emergency dose if he started to shift… assuming she could. Tobry was a strong man and, in shifter form, twice as strong again. With an effort she buried that worry as well.
“Take this with you,” said Holm, handing her a little brass implement on a lanyard; a stubby cylinder with lenses at either end, like an inch-long telescope. “It’ll help with that problem we talked about earlier.”
“What problem?”
“Getting an overview of an underground battle. Tobry and I put it together while we waited.”
“But what is it?”
“A mage glass,” said Tobry. “Focus it on any part of your map and it’ll show you what’s happening there.”
“More or less,” said Holm.
“Can I talk to our captains with it? Give them orders?”
“Of course not.”
Then it probably wasn’t going to be much use, but she hung it around her neck.
“Have you got the map?” said Holm.
“In my pack.” She looked around. “Let’s get the Pale armed.”
Tobry and Holm had cracked the locks on the armoury and the nearby storerooms and laid out crates of swords, knives, chisels, hammers and many other kinds of tools. They had also broken into the heatstone store and opened boxes containing small cut pieces of heatstone, which were used for a myriad of heating purposes. As the last of the Pale collected their weapons, Tali’s head began to throb.
She was explaining how to hurl pieces of heatstone so they would break and go off like grenadoes when the clangours sounded from a dozen places at once, and a terrified cry echoed down the corridor.
“They’re coming!”
There was instant panic, Pale running in all directions, crashing into one another, jamming in the exits and trampling any who fell. Radl’s plan had failed before it began. The element of surprise had been lost, the guards at the exits were alerted, and now the little Pale army faced a greatly superior enemy.
“What do we do?” said Tali. They could not collapse the tunnel into the enemy quarters now — they could not get to it.
“Only two choices,” said Holm. “Attack or run. And I don’t like either.”
“We’ve nowhere to run to — if we can’t beat them, we’ll never get out. We’ve got to fight. Form up your ranks,” she yelled. “Weapons at the ready.”
No one took any notice. “This is hopeless,” said Tali, arming herself with more pieces of heatstone. “I don’t know why I came here.”
“At least they’ll die on their feet, not their knees.” Holm looked over her shoulder. “Here they come.”
A band of Cythonians were forcing their way in through the main entrance, at least fifty, though Tali wasn’t tall enough to see how many ranks there were behind the leaders. They were armed with short swords, the best weapon for fighting in confined spaces, and the officers among them wore leather armour.
Radl sprang up on a table. “They’re only a handful,” she bellowed. “We can take them.”
She leapt down with a chunk of heatstone in each hand, hurled them across the assembly area at the advancing enemy, and before the missiles landed she was racing forwards, armoured only by her loincloth and her amber skin.
Tali flung her heatstone at the same time. It burst at the feet of the leading rank of the enemy, the blast killing several and knocking others down, shrivelling their hair and setting their clothes alight. The Pale let out a ragged cheer.
“Come on!” screamed Radl.
Pain speared through Tali’s skull, as it always did when heatstone or sunstone was broken nearby though, to her dismay, none of the enemy had been knocked unconscious. Maybe that only happened with sunstone.
She staggered after Radl, and so did a horde of Pale. The enemy, disconcerted by the unprecedented defiance of their slaves, beat out the flames and retreated, leaving their dead and injured. The Pale swarmed over the bodies, arming themselves with swords, knives and chuck-lashes, which they hurled after the retreating Cythonians.
“Don’t waste the chuck-lashes,” Tali yelled, donning a leather chest plate and helmet from a small Cythonian woman, and taking an odd-shaped crossbow and a bag of quarrels. “Hold onto them until the enemy are close.”
The enemy surged again, and were again driven back, though this time more than half of the fallen were Pale. Tali wound the crossbow, aimed and fired. One less Cythonian to fight. But then they came again, in armour in a flying wedge.
“Use the heatstones!” Tali screamed. “Throw them all at the same time.”
It was no use. The Pale weren’t trained to fight as a team. The enemy drove deep into the milling slaves, and
the slaughter was terrible.
The Pale dropped their heatstones, broke and ran backwards into the broad tunnel that ran from the assembly area towards the toadstool grottoes. The enemy came after them, killing more and more.
Holm caught Tali’s arm and shouted in her ear, though she could not make out what he was saying over the clamour.
“What?” she yelled, dropping the crossbow, which was an encumbrance at close quarters, and duelling a tall Cythonian left-handed.
Holm jerked her backwards just in time. “This isn’t working! They know how to fight down here and the Pale don’t. They aren’t using heatstone effectively — they’re letting the enemy get too close. Weight, strength and armour are everything in hand-to-hand battles, and the Pale don’t have it.”
“I know. But I don’t know what to do.”
“See if you can bring the roof down in front of the enemy.”
“How’s that going to help?”
“It’ll give the Pale a chance to regroup, and you the time to beat some useful tactics into them.”
“Have you got any heatstone?”
“Yes, here.” He thrust several chunks into her hands.
Tali’s head shrieked but she had to ignore it. “Radl! Bring them back. Back!”
The bloodiest fighting was just ahead, and Tali recognised Radl’s tall, splendid figure, fighting a desperate rear-guard action that was doomed to failure.
Tali hurled a piece of heatstone past her, taking down the two people Radl was fighting and opening up a gap between her and the next squad of the enemy. She checked the roof rock. She wasn’t sure how well heatstone would work against solid rock, so a spot where the roof was fissured was her best hope.
Several dozen armoured Cythonians were lumbering towards her, brandishing swords and flinging chuck-lashes that exploded to her left and right. She waited until they were only twenty feet away, then hurled another piece of heatstone up at the fissured tunnel roof, ten feet above them.
The burst brought down yards of rock and three of the enemy disappeared beneath the fall. The ones behind retreated, their clothes smoking, watching her warily. She hurled another chunk of heatstone and more roof caved in, rubble bouncing on rubble until billowing dust blocked all sight of the enemy.
Tali shoved the littlest piece of heatstone into her pouch and made her way back through the Pale to Holm. “Boost me up, quick.”
He lifted her onto his shoulders.
“Retreat,” Tali screamed. She had to scream or she would never have been heard. “This way.” She pointed down the tunnel, away from the enemy.
“Where to?” yelled the man with the big fists and the twisted foot. What was his name? Balun.
“To the exit,” someone shouted, and a band of Pale stampeded, carrying Holm and Tali along with them.
“We can’t reach the Merchantery Exit from here,” yelled another Pale. “We can’t get to any exit.”
CHAPTER 95
Bastion Cowly had taken the message. The gate guards were swinging the wooden gates shut and the guards were scrambling up onto the wall, but too late. Before they could slide the heavy bars across the inside of the gates, Grandys and Syrten struck them together and forced them open.
Then it was on, Grandys attacking the hapless defenders with unusual savagery, even for him. Rix was sickened by the bloodshed. He could not stay close to the man, could not take part in it. He allowed a gap to open up between himself and the two Heroes, trying to knock his opponents out rather than kill them. Rufuss stalked past, killing like a blank-faced automaton. The doomed defenders counterattacked bravely; the battle broke up with dozens of little melees, and Rix lost sight of Grandys.
Rix fought half-heartedly, never wanting to raise a sword again, and when a big guard came at him, swinging a club, he was too slow to avoid it. It struck him on the side of the head and he went down.
He lay there, seeing double, so dazed that he lost track of what was happening. Grandys’ army surged past, chasing the defenders and hacking them down. Rix crawled several yards, bumped into a heap of bodies and stalled. He could hear shouting, the clash of swords, the screams of men, women and children, but they seemed to be coming from further and further away…
“There he is, the craven bastard,” said Grandys. An iron-shod boot thumped Rix in the ribs. “Get up!”
He groaned and gave a feeble heave. It felt as though his head was tearing open, but he could not come to his knees.
“Pick the cur up!”
Two soldiers lifted Rix to his feet, then had to hold him upright. He forced his eyes open. It was dark and a fire blazed not far away. He must have been unconscious for hours. He was drenched in dried blood, though only the flaking blood on his face and in his hair was his own.
“Well?” said Grandys. He was drunk, as he was at every feast. It only made him meaner.
“Hit with a club,” said Rix. “Didn’t see him.”
“It didn’t look like you wanted to fight today,” said Grandys. “Drag him up to the feast, lads. We’ll show him how we treat cowards around here.”
The castle was small, and it was only a hundred yards to the bonfire they had made from the furniture. A bonfire so huge that it shouted Grandys is here to anyone within five miles. Butchered beasts were roasting on spits. Light rain was falling and an icy wind curled around the castle yard.
In the background Rix saw a row of bound prisoners. His gut tightened. He knew what was in store for them after the feast and, judging by the despairing looks they were giving one another, so did they.
Benches were drawn up before the fire and the troops were eating and drinking, wrapped in coats and blankets. The soldiers dumped Rix on a bench by himself and he slumped there, freezing on one side and roasting on the other. Platters of greasy, half-raw meat were carried around, along with jugs of beer and flagons of a purple wine so strong that it stripped the enamel off teeth. Rix knew he would have to drink, so he forced down several mouthfuls of stringy horsemeat. At least the grease would put a lining on his stomach.
It seemed to help. By the time he swallowed the last of it, he felt a little steadier, and even took his turn at jug and flagon without disgracing himself by throwing up. But all the while, the knot in his gut was growing. Grandys kept looking his way, then eyeing the prisoners and grinning. He always carried out his threats.
Rix could not watch any more prisoners put down, especially not these innocent folk, none of whom were soldiers. He had to strike now, before Grandys began. At least he might save a few lives in exchange for his own.
Grandys wiped his greasy hands on his month’s growth of beard, then took up Maloch, leering at Rix as if defying him to intervene. The feast went silent. Everyone was looking from Grandys to Rix, waiting for him to challenge, and be killed.
He forced himself to his feet. His head spun, but settled. He propped himself on the point of his sword for a moment, then stood upright. Had the command spell broken? If it had not, he would die for nothing.
“No more killing of innocent prisoners,” he croaked.
Grandys beckoned to the guards. A man and a woman were hauled up. Grandys put them to death with no more feeling than if they were bags of wheat.
The drunken soldiers roared, “More, more!”
“That’s enough!” cried Rix.
The pain in his gut was so bad that Maloch might already have been embedded there. He looked around at the soldiers, then back to Grandys, and met his eye. Be strong, Rix thought. This is your hour, and it could save the world — or if you fail, doom it.
“Before all these witnesses,” he said in a voice that echoed back from the bastion walls, “I repudiate my oath. You’re a mongrel, Grandys, and I can serve you no longer.”
“Your oath stands,” snarled Grandys, “until the moment you die.”
“An oath given under duress of sorcery is meaningless.”
“Then why are you repudiating it?”
“Because I’m a man of my word.”
“Then prove your mastery over me in combat,” said Rix. “If you dare.”
It was a challenge Grandys could not refuse, even had he wanted to. Which of course he did not. His triumphant leer suggested that he had been expecting it. I’m predictable, thought Rix, and he isn’t. But give me the tiniest chance and I’ll drive my concealed dagger into his eye so hard it’ll come out the back of his head. Let’s see him come back from that.
“Bring the third prisoner,” said Grandys, grinning so broadly that it was almost tearing his bloated face in two.
Another prisoner was dragged out, a slender young woman with a cloud of wavy hair that flamed in the firelight. The lump in Rix’s belly became a spiked ball rolling back and forth, tearing through him. No!
The guard yanked her head up by the hair.
Her name burst out of Rix, “Glynnie!” Only now did he truly realise how much she meant to him. He lurched around, staring at Grandys. “How did you know about her?”
“She cried out your name when I commanded you at Glimmering. I see everything, Rixium. And when I happened on her in the raid on the chancellor’s camp last week, I knew she’d come in handy.”
“Sorry, Rix.” Glynnie bowed her head.
“Enough of the cooing and the cow eyes,” said Grandys. “Your little maidservant is the prize — for the winner.”
“What?” Rix croaked.
“You win, you get her,” Grandys said carelessly. “I win, I get her.”
Rix dragged out his sword. For Glynnie’s sake he must not fail. With his right hand he had been a brilliant swordsman; the match of most men in the land. And Grandys was drunk, which must slow him a little.
Rix wasn’t as dexterous with the left but after all the practice he was very good. Now he fought as though possessed, using every ounce of his skill and creative flair. He could not afford to be predictable, or allow his strokes to repeat themselves. The moment Grandys identified a pattern he would strike, and that would be the end of him — and Glynnie.
