Haven atobas-4

by Joel Shepherd

  Then came more footsteps. These moved less quickly, as though uncertain of their surroundings. Rhillian crouched in the shadow of the low balcony as two Stamentaast came past, swords out and searching for whomever had come this way.

  Rhillian stepped behind the second and calmly cut his throat. The first heard the sword fall from the dying man's hand. He spun, and Rhillian threw her knife, hard to miss at this range. It hit him in the neck, and she picked up the fallen sword and ran him through to be sure. No armour, she noted with satisfaction as he died. She pulled the blade free, recovered her knife and faded into the dark.

  The alley opened onto a road, where Stamentaast gathered in the aftermath of their successful raid. A group stood here, to guard this side of the Rontiis' grand house. Soon a Nasi-Keth man came, trotting on a horse. He dismounted and joined their conversation-Rhillian caught only snatches, her Ilduuri was barely average, and these men had a regional accent.

  After a short conversation, the Nasi-Keth came directly toward the mouth of her alley. Rhillian faded back, and let the darkness claim her. The man undid his pants and began to relieve himself. He had barely finished when he received the shock of his life, to look up in the gloom and find a pair of deadly emerald eyes staring back at him.

  He died as the borrowed sword ran him through, and Rhillian took the serrin blade from over his shoulder as he fell. Its balance was light and pleasant. Six Stamentaast turned in astonishment as she came at them from the alley. Two died immediately. Two more managed at least a parry before the whistling angled blade cost them limbs and lives. The fifth managed an attack, the arc of which Rhillian stepped inside and cut through. The sixth simply stared, frozen in terror.

  “Pial'a shom est,” she explained to him, in her most eloquent Saalsi form. You should not have. Then she killed him.

  It all happened very fast and rather quietly, so that the Nasi-Keth's horse seemed more puzzled than alarmed. Rhillian stroked his nose, then mounted swiftly and set off in pursuit of where she thought the wagons were heading.

  SIXTEEN

  Sasha and Bergen arrived back at Father Belgride's temple via the rear planking and found Yasmyn waiting impatiently by the pier.

  “What's going on?” she demanded. “Where have you been and how bad is it?”

  “What do you think's going on?” Sasha muttered, walking past her to the rear doors. “They're rounding up all the serrin. They have Aisha for certain, I don't know about Rhillian.”

  She emerged into the rear-quarters dining hall and found it filled with serrin. These were no talmaad warriors, they were regular Ilduuri, some having ancestry in these lands for two hundred years. They sat on blankets against walls, or on tables in the absence of enough chairs, or stood in huddled groups and talked, their voices hushed as though frightened that men beyond the walls would hear them. They were of all ages, including many children. Some appeared barely more than quarter-serrin, and a few entirely human…mixed families, Sasha thought, and doubted the Stamentaast would have more mercy on the humans who wedded serrin than the serrin themselves. If she were to wed Errollyn, this would be her. And their children.

  “Father Belgride has been taking them in,” Yasmyn explained. “They all come here, and some priests have been taking a cart around. Stamentaast will not search the cart if the priest gives his word there is nothing to find. Priests are carrying wagonloads of serrin here, and lying to Stamentaast. Another priest takes a boat along the lakeshore.”

  “And these aren't the only wretched wanderers the priests are taking in,” came a new voice. Sasha looked and found Daish, upright and walking toward them. She stared in astonishment, then embraced him with relief, remembering at the last to be careful of his ribs.

  “You got better!” she observed, as Bergen repeated the embrace.

  “The Steel border guards took good care of me, and those medicines were amazing,” said Daish. He looked remarkably healthy, Sasha thought, with the colour back in his cheeks. “A few of them were coming this way and offered to hide me amongst them, clothed like them. And Bergen, come, look who else has returned.”

  He led them from the dining hall, down narrow stone passages past the kitchen and washrooms, to the stables. Before one of the stalls he stopped, and gestured. There stood a big cavalry horse, munching on fodder.

  “Tanner!” the big Enoran exclaimed, and ran to his mount. “How in the worlds…?”

  “Two days after you left,” said Daish, “I awoke in my chamber in the Steel guardhouse, and I was feeling much better. No sooner had I thought it than a soldier knocked on the door and said that I should come down to the stables. Tanner was there-they'd found him outside the walls on the other side of the canyon. He must have recovered after he collapsed, gone back to the river as Sasha said he would, then followed when he was stronger. The retreating Kazeri would have gone straight past him.”

  “Always a chance,” said Sasha, with renewed determination. “Never count a fighter out.” She turned to Bergen. “We have to go after Aisha and those other serrin. That's Family Rontii, the Remischtuul's just concluded they're to be removed, and I doubt they'll just cart them to Saalshen.”

  “I'll go,” said Daish and Yasmyn simultaneously. Daish had been told about Aisha, Sasha saw. He looked determined.

  “Someone should stay and defend the temple,” said Bergen.

  As though to echo his point, Sasha heard a hammering from beyond the stable doors. She strode that way, down the passage that adjoined the stables to the temple. Father Belgride leaned upon his main doors, lit by wall lamps, shouting through the grille at a man outside. With a final yell, he slammed the steel plate over the grille, and noticed Sasha.

  “Stamentaast,” he said grimly. “They say I have serrin inside. They threaten to storm the temple.”

  “Would they?” Sasha asked disbelievingly.

  “I don't know,” said Belgride, rubbing his beard. “I say the gods will curse them if they come in here with swords. But I don't know. Maybe.”

  “That's it,” Sasha muttered, striding for her chambers. “I'm tired of my enemies and this dress making common cause against me. I'm getting changed.”

  “I will have no fighting in my temple!” Belgride called after her, warningly.

  “Tell that to them!” Sasha retorted over her shoulder.

  She was fighting the uncooperative dress over her head when Yasmyn hammered on her door. “Sasha, there's a man at the rear wants to talk to you!”

  Sasha pulled on jacket, bandoleer, and sword, and strode through the stone halls, now filled with many bewildered and frightened serrin families. A man of mixed-race appearance stopped her.

  “This is your fault!” he accused her in Saalsi. “The Stamentaast spoke of traitors, spies, and infiltrators-they were looking for you! You and your friends, someone tipped them off to your presence and…”

  “Someone like you, probably,” Sasha said coldly. “Someone who will not fight. Someone who weasels up to tyrants in hope of gratitude.”

  “Don't you pretend that you're doing this for us!” the man snarled. “You have no love for Ilduur or Ilduuri, you bring fire and death down on our heads for the sake of your precious foreign war and foreign friends!”

  “You sound just like the Remischtuul,” Sasha said incredulously. “Why don't you go and join them, if you have such a meeting of the minds? I'm sure you'll enjoy their company far more than mine and my foreign friends, if you don't mind them killing your children and raping your women.”

  The man grabbed her in fury. Sasha punched him in the face, and he fell. About her, the crowd recoiled in fear and shock. Sasha glared at them, readjusting her jacket where the man had grabbed her, and stepped over him on her way to the rear warehouse.

  “Who's the tyrant now!” someone shouted after her.

  “If you don't like it,” Sasha yelled over her shoulder, “go outside and play with the Stamentaast!”

  At the rear warehouse, she met Yasmyn on the point of entering to c
heck on the commotion. “Trouble?” she asked.

  “No,” said Sasha. “Sheep are never trouble, that's why they're sheep.”

  In the dim light of a lantern, by the rear entrance from the lakeside pier, stood Arken Haast. He wore dark clothes, and an Ilduuri Steel-sized sword through his belt. He talked animatedly with Bergen, leaning against sacks of grain. Sasha thought he must have rowed here, across the lake.

  “My father would not tell me,” he said to Sasha. “Until the Stamentaast attacked, that is. The Stamentaast sent messengers to the Shuen Vaal quarter to tell us to remain in our houses, and that anyone found sheltering serrin would be punished. They say all serrin are collaborators with foreign forces. My father was furious-I think he went and threatened some of his Remischtuul colleagues to tell him where the Meraini are. Now he says they're in the Altene. It's a big old feudal castle atop Dirdaan Mountain, it used to belong to Family Altene before Maldereld came, back in feudal times. Now it's a residence for Remischtuul masters.”

  “Defences?” Sasha asked.

  Arken's eyes narrowed at her. “You mean to attack it?”

  “Depends on what you tell me its defences are. The Stamentaast are all tied up here. The Steel are confined to barracks, or on home leave like you. Who else is there?”

  “The guilds are powerful. The Remischtuul is made up of guildmasters, with many allies in the various guilds. They make a lot of work at the residences, servants, guards, grounds and kitchen staff, that sort of thing.”

  “And even more now with Meraini talons paying for it,” Bergen observed.

  “So how many defending this Altene residence?” Sasha pressed.

  “The Altene,” Arken corrected. “That's what it's called. Perhaps two hundred.”

  Sasha's eyebrows raised. “That's a lot of defence for a united people at peace with themselves.”

  Arken snorted. “They're scared of the Steel, and they're scared of Saalshen. The talmaad don't always fight fair, and they can infiltrate Ilduur's high roads by night, and attack from the shadows.”

  Sasha nodded. “I saw plenty of that in Petrodor. But I learned how to do it too. And unlike the talmaad, I now know where to attack. Can you gather some men, without raising an alarm? Trustworthy men?” Arken looked uncertain. “What's the problem?”

  “The Altene is a very hard target,” said Arken. “There is only one road, and high cliffs surrounding.”

  “That means we have them trapped,” Sasha retorted. “What really troubles you?”

  “What if we succeed? What then?”

  “We expose the Remischtuul for the frauds and liars they are. We show that they don't truly believe in Ilduuri independence, that they're prostituting Ilduur to the Meraini for fear of fighting a war they aren't sure they can win.”

  “Destroy the Remischtuul?”

  Sasha shrugged. “Your decision, not mine. Expose them, for certain. Let the Ilduuri people decide.”

  “The Ilduuri people will not want this war regardless of what happens to the Remischtuul,” Arken said. “I warn you, do not hope to win the love of the people for your cause, you won't get it.”

  Sasha folded her arms. She wasn't here to make friends. Arken was wondering where this would lead, and where she would lead them. Or if he was crazy to help her to take charge of anything. She was a foreigner, as the Remischtuul charged, and had foreign interests foremost in her heart. But if the Steel's leadership was purged, and none other amongst their ranks here in Andal could motivate them…

  “Look,” she said, “there are costs to every action. I can't promise that you'll like the outcome of this action. I can't promise that all will end well for Ilduur. I have no idea what will happen should the Remischtuul be exposed. I have no idea what will happen should the Steel march away to war. Quite possibly nothing good, for the odds are not with us. All any of us can do is what we are certain is right. And we can hope that if there is any foundation that makes a nation and a people worthy of a decent future, it is that its leaders are men and women who do the right thing when it needs to be done. I'm not naive enough to think that that is any guarantee of a happy future, but there are far worse foundations to build upon. And right now, it's all I have to offer you.”

  Arken considered her for a moment. Then he nodded, curtly. I'll gather some men. We must be plainclothed. We cannot move on the Altene in force and in Steel uniform before we have exposed them, or it will be us making the first move in civil war. That way lies ruin.”

  Sasha nodded. “I agree. But we'll need a way to get up the mountain, as high as possible, without being seen. Is it far?”

  Arken shook his head. “Down the valley and turn right. Two days if on foot all the way, less if we have transport to the base of the trail.”

  Sasha blinked. “There's a trail? You said there was only one road?”

  “I wanted to see that you were serious,” Arken said with a faint smile. “It seems that you are.”

  “Lad,” said Bergen, “you have no idea.”

  There were no Stamentaast away from the town centre, and Rhillian rode through the ramshackle outskirts of Andal at a trot. She headed for the southern valley slope, where she thought she could gain a vantage across the southern edge of the city, and see a line of wagons along one of the valley roads. There was a full moon, and the east-west orientation of the valley meant that there were only two directions the wagons could go.

  Certainly they were headed out of the city. If the Stamentaast were intending what she thought they were, they could not do it in the city, surrounded by witnesses and with no place to dispose of the bodies.

  Andal's buildings ended, and Rhillian rode upslope amidst the paddocks of outskirt farms. Upon a hillock, she stopped. Probably the column would come this way, to the east, as westward along the lakeside was narrow, with fewer options. One could not dispose of many bodies in Lake Andal. Bodies floated, and the lakeshore was well populated. The Remischtuul could not be so sanguine of the goodwill of the Ilduuri population as to let the bodies of murdered serrin come bobbing along the lake in their hundreds over the next few days.

  Rhillian could see small roads emerging from the city, winding their way up and along the southern slope. There was not even a single traveller out in the night. The few fires in the city had not spread, small orange glares and climbing trails of smoke, most of them clustered together in the tight serrin neighbourhoods.

  She looked away from the lake, to the east, where the valley forked in two. One fork went northeast, and that way she could glimpse a town about the inflowing Andal River. That was Andal Garrison, home of the Ilduuri Steel. It would be barely an hour's march, once mobilised. But the road looked clear, with no glint of massed armour beneath the glare of the moon. Beyond the garrison, Aaldenmoot rose like a white tooth in the pale night sky, highest of the ragged northern range.

  Then she saw it. A column of wagons, emerging from trees on the southern outskirts. A larger column than she had seen at the Rontiis' House-possibly it had detoured to add more prisoners. Rhillian watched it come, inching its way upslope, now disappearing behind a fold. She would not despair. She did not know what one serrin alone could do.

  The wagons reappeared, closer now. The road would pass above her on the slope, she realised. No more than a hundred paces, but there were trees here, and she would not be seen. Between herself and that road was a small park, and a pillar monument to the fallen heroes of the Ilduuri Steel, crossed swords emblazoned on its side. Rhillian wondered if the Stamentaast would appreciate the irony.

  Soon the wagons did pass, a rattle of wheels and hooves. When they were far enough ahead, she followed. She held to the lower road for a while, past grand houses, gates locked and window shutters firmly fastened. This way, the column would progress along the eastern valley fork, its land rising all the time, up into the eastern ranges. Across those lay Saalshen.

  She spurred the horse up a grassy hillside onto the higher road, then found another way to climb up to a trail hi
gher still. Houses here were fewer, replaced by farmers' shacks and pens for sheep or cattle. Looking down from her high trail, Rhillian could see the entire column-twelve wagons, each crowded with perhaps twenty prisoners; some guards riding on the wagons, others riding horses alongside.

  As the column neared the trees, she thought she glimpsed movement behind a farmhouse just upslope of the road. Something glinted in the moonlight, like steel. Her trail began a bend where she lost sight of the column, and she pressed her horse to a reluctant canter. Out of sight, she heard yells from the column. Then screams.

  Finally she reached a part of the trail that afforded a good view. The wagons were stopped, one now careening down the hillside, scattering bodies off the back, others pulled aside, men leaping from the back. Horsemen from the column were galloping uphill, skirting the ambush point, which seemed to be focused upon the farmhouse. Rhillian kicked her horse's flanks, and galloped on the diagonal down the grassy hillside, fighting to control the protesting animal.

  As she drew closer, she could see archers firing from the farmhouse and from amongst the trees. Dead Stamentaast were lying on the road, others sheltering behind their wagons, others still trying to grasp control of the wagons and turn them about…but rutted roads, precision arrow fire, and the confusion of jammed and now colliding wagons made that difficult.

  The horsemen flanking the farmhouse were now directly uphill of it, just barely out of range of an upward-firing archer. Instead of charging, they were debating. The archers must be serrin, Rhillian thought, to be attacking so successfully by night. The horsemen were debating whether it was worth charging into that arrowfire, knowing its deadliness.