by Holly Lisle
“To that end,” I continued, “Onyxes and Bloodstones must fight alongside Obsidians at the front gate, and on the east and west walls. Put up resistance at the outer gate, but when it is breached, fall back through the Arena, close the inner gates, and loose the starving rats. When they fail, Ossalene archers will shoot fire arrows into the remaining troops. If the wall is breached, Obsidians, Onyxes, and Bloodstones will have to fight hand-to-hand.”
“What about side defenses?” the new Windcrystal, who was being asked to commit her Onyxes, asked.
I said, “Defenders on the east and west walls are soaking the ground outside the Citadel with lamp oil. When the majority of Sheoua’s forces have been committed to that ground, more flaming arrows will set the men on fire.”
I took a deep breath. “Some may survive to get inside the Citadel. This is where every fighting sera will be critical. Non-fighting seru and oracles need to take the acolytes, penitents, and slaves into the Onyxes’ underground chambers and seal the entrances. Should the fighters fail, you will be their last line of defense; you should consider that capture may not be preferable to death.”
I heard the gasps. I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to say what I’d just said, but the seru needed to understand how much was at stake. Having warned them, I offered what comfort I could. “I don’t believe that you will have to make this choice, however; the future strongly favors the Ossalenes over Sheoua. If we are triumphant, the Obsidians will ring the ‘Solar Triumphal’ on the bells when Sheoua is defeated. It will then be safe for you to come out.”
By then, of course, my chosen people would have sailed with me. Sunspar and her Bloodstones would not be able to turn her forces against us. All who remained could make a convincing claim of having been duped. There should be no bloodshed between Ossalenes. The Order would go on much as it had before; and the Obsidians would report that they had been instructed to protect everyone—from the slaves to the oracles—until “the Hawkspar Eyes of War” returned. I never intended to go back. But I would die, whether sooner or later. If they were so inclined, Redbird or the other Obsidians with us could then return the Eyes to the monastery.
Silence followed my pronouncements, broken at last by sniffling from one of the little slaves. “I don’t want the bad men to take us again,” she sobbed. “I want to go home to my mommy.”
I understood her so well. I wanted more than anything in the world to go home to my mother, too. It was all I’d wanted since the day I was ripped from her arms, and my heart went out to the child. I stepped down from the vantage point behind the kneeling bench, and picked her up, and hugged her. This was an enormous breach of protocol, and oracles and seru gasped. But I didn’t care. I patted her back and rocked her in my arms and said, “Hush. Everything will be all right.”
Holding her, feeling her head rest against the curve of my neck while her thin arms draped over my shoulders, I wondered what sort of future she would find when all of this was done. Would she and the others who stayed behind in the relative safety of the Citadel be better off? Or would we, who sought freedom?
Aaran
The fog and the screaming horrors within it had fallen behind.
As they sailed into the hidden harbor, with the red sun falling into the western sea and bloodying it, he considered that his windmen were exhausted. The sea still lay like glass all around him, with no breath of natural wind to fill his sails.
He would be sailing from the harbor onward, toward monsters, cannibals, and Jostfar only knew what other nightmares, and he would be doing it on the power of drained windmen and nothing more.
Maybe Jostfar would grant him a sudden storm, favorable winds, a handful of new windmen.
But probably not. The ship would be full of panicked children, and heading into terrible danger, and it would be sailing crippled.
This was the voyage Haakvar didn’t want to make.
Well. Four ships would have been better than one. And four experienced Tonk crews could have brought along enough spare windmen to keep the ships moving forward.
Aaran looked up at the last bloody flashes of sunlight on the bone-white cliffs towering over his head. A small dock lay before him and to the starboard side. A narrow ledge high above, directly over the place where the ship docked, marked the presence of an entryway. And two paths, neither of them wide enough to offer safe passage to any but goats, led up to it. Carved into the surface of one path were arrows pointing up. In the other one, he caught glimpses of arrows pointing down.
But the sun finished its crawl below the horizon, and long shadows enveloped the last bits of cliff. At a distance, he heard war drums. Their steady, slow pulsing echoed across the water. They were distant from him, and he did not feel them as an immediate threat. But he suspected that they signaled the arrival of the warriors who, with their four mighty ships, were preparing to attack the captives he intended to rescue.
“Make fast,” he ordered, but he kept his voice down. He and his crew worked stealthily, tying up tight to the dock.
They were going to have to go up one of those paths. Going to have to come back down the other one. In the dark. His skin crawled. He was as much at home in the sea as a fish, but the very idea of his men climbing rocks in the dark on dry land gave him visions of destruction and death and mangled horror.
The drumming in the distance picked up speed, and he heard pipes beginning to play. They were girlish pipes to his way of thinking—high-voiced and melodic. They had little in common with Tonk pipes, which had warrior voices, other than that they were loud.
He wouldn’t complain, though. The pipes and drums made stealth unnecessary.
“We have to get up to the doorway at the top of the cliff. We have captives to rescue. A lot of them. And treasure to claim, too, though I don’t know how much we’ll find here, or how much time we’ll have to find it. The captives come first, though. I’m thinking we can arrange pulleys and ropes from that shelf up there, and lower the heavy things down. Maybe some of those slaves who won’t be able to negotiate the paths.”
“You didn’t say anything about captives,” one of the Eastils said.
“We’re liberating slaves,” Aaran said. “Tonk slaves, a lot of them. We’ll get a good reward for it. But we’re rescuing them from a sort of monastery, and I’m reckoning that monastery is as full of treasure as anyplace else that collects money for the gods, and then keeps it for the priests.”
The Eastil grinned. The Tonks didn’t have such places; the only things of value a raider would find in Tonk houses of worship were books. Eastil lands, however, were loaded with them.
“Right, then,” he said. “Slaves and gold. What better booty could we hope for?”
“The slaves are Tonk, and under my protection,” Aaran said, letting his voice carry to the men on deck. “Whatever harm one of you brings to one of them, you’ll suffer a hundred times worse yourself.” That wasn’t the sort of thing a captain would ever have to say to a Tonk crew. Rape and pillage weren’t the Tonk way. Some looting, maybe, if the target warranted. But Ethebet had no patience with rapists, or with those who slaughtered the innocent and the helpless.
A rabble crew of foreign motley needed different handling. And the grumbles told Aaran he had been wise to address the situation immediately.
A couple of the sailors took ropes and rebar and pulleys and mallets and began working their way up the face of the cliff, braving the gathering gloom without lights. While they climbed, Aaran put the rest of his men into teams—one that would gather the captives as they came out and direct them to either the makeshift lift or one of the two paths; a second that would get the captives off the deck and into the holds below; a third that would bear arms and work its way into the passages behind the escaping captives, both to make sure that they weren’t attacked from behind, and to gather such loot as they might find while bringing up the rear of the retreat.
From the top of the cliff, he heard his men setting the rebar eye-ring into the ston
e. It took only moments, and then the first rope end came snaking down onto the deck. A second followed. Then both ends from the rope on the other side landed. The crew had found a cargo crate in the meantime, emptied it, and were setting solid metal hooks into the top of it that would allow the ropes to hold on to it firmly without fraying or wearing. Two sailors were rigging the block and tackle. Aaran figured they could fit ten children at a time into the lift. He had one sailor climb in, and directed the rest to get him to the top as quickly as they could.
Aaran timed the trip, and figured he could move fifty small children down by that route in the same time that the older children and adults came down by the single down path. He wanted to keep the up path clear as long as he could, in case he had to send more men up to fight. Neither path was wide enough to permit two people going in opposite directions any hope of passing each other. He didn’t want to have his men be forced to choose between pitching children off the cliff and watching their friends and comrades die in enemy hands above. Using both paths for downward travel would halve the time it took to clear the captives. But he decided foresight suggested less hurry would offer a better chance of long-term survival. When all were up who were going up, he’d direct his men to start having everyone use both paths for evacuating the landing.
He heard a metallic creaking, and a shadow in flapping black robes stepped out onto the shelf. So the door was open.
He directed his armed team up first. “Hurry,” he said. “Get behind them, stay behind them, keep them alive.”
The men took off up the path. They did not make a swift trip of it, but no one fell to his death on the journey. The team that would sort and direct the captives followed next. The third team manned the ropes.
When the heavy door opened, orderly lines of children of all sizes, and of women in flowing robes, moved out onto the landing. They seemed calm. He could hear screaming coming from high above. He could smell smoke. But he saw no signs of panic.
Aaran’s men and several women lifted children into the crate, and his throat tightened. He prayed quickly that the rebar was secure, that the ropes were true, that the pulleys were sound, and that the crate would hold together.
And then the first of the littlest ones started down toward him.
Meanwhile, a single shadowy captive was working down the inner path, inserting torches into sockets along the cliff face and lighting them. The flickering shadows gave him his first glimpse of the creature, and that first glimpse gave him pause. She had the form of a woman, even if that form was mostly hidden by billowing black cloth. But something was hellishly wrong with her face. With her eyes, which seemed completely black until she turned her head, at which times they seemed to light up and turn as bloody red as the setting sun had been. He did not think it a good omen. He wondered if he and his men had been lured to their doom by monsters.
But the children landed on the ship’s deck, and they were just children.
Little shaven-headed children, none of whom he guessed would be any older than six. Their left palms bore Tonk clan marks. They chattered to each other in a language that was not Tonk.
The crate had held a dozen of them, and Aaran’s deckhands hurried them into the passenger quarters, where Tuua and Eban would offer them comfort and reassurance and food. Food, Aaran guessed, being the one thing that would give them the most reassurance that they were going to be all right.
The black-eyed creature finished lighting her torches, walked over to Aaran as if she could tell without difficulty which of the men on the dark deck was in charge, and bowed.
In formal, archaic, oddly accented Tonk, she said, “I am one of the … guardians.”
“I’m Aaran, the captain of this ship.”
She bowed again. “Thank you. I must go.”
“The children are that way.” He pointed her to the forward companionway, which would take her down to the passenger quarters and the little ones. But she shook her head, leapt into the air, and threw a kick that, if it connected, would take the top of a man’s head off. She laughed. “You must guard children until Rosestones come. I fight men.” And then she ran—ran—up the path, inhumanly graceful, to take death to the raiders attacking the monastery.
She scared Aaran. He’d bet she was going to scare a lot of the men on the ship.
Her presence ought to cut down on the possibility of men on a ship behaving badly in the presence of young women, however. He wondered what in the hell she was.
He watched as gray-robed youths with stubble for hair began filing along the down path. They were clearly unsure of themselves, and their progress was slow.
The crate, meanwhile, delivered its second load of children. These were a bit bigger, a bit older. All still shaven-headed, all still wearing what Aaran could only think of as gray grain sacks.
The crew got them off the decks, and as they did, the first of the captives making their way down the path reached the dock, and stepped warily to the deck.
From beyond the walls that lined the top of the cliff, Aaran could hear screaming. Booming drums and howling pipes, the crash of metal, the thuds of something big hitting stone.
The captives coming down the paths kept their eyes forward, stayed at a steady pace, little gaggles of older children in a line between a lead adult and a following adult who became the lead adult for the next little cluster.
A lot of people were coming down that narrow path, faster than he would have imagined, in a more orderly fashion than he could have believed.
The crate made its way up to the top of the cliff, and captives were hurrying across the deck now, each following the path of the one before as if they were ants on an ant trail, disappearing into their hill.
They all looked the same to him. Plain, their hair either completely gone or else the merest stubble at the top. None of them had the terrifying, weird eyes of the woman who had set the torches. Aside from her, though, none of them had a clear, identifiable gender, either. They might all have been young boys, or all young girls, or some of each. They were slender but not starved, clean, frightened, and simply dressed.
On some hands, he caught flashes of Tonk marks, but not on all.
The screaming grew louder, and closer, but those coming down the steps stayed steady, responding to the adults who walked among them and issued orders in a language Aaran couldn’t even begin to guess at.
Above, Aaran saw the line of children trickle to nothing, to be replaced by women in robes of a multitude of colors, instead of the uniform black and gray and brown that preceded them.
They moved more quickly, at a trot that made his throat tighten.
Behind them came his men.
No more little children waited at the top of the ledge. Instead, treasure started making its way down, fast and reckless. Men at the bottom caught the crate and poured its contents into the drop chute that would dump everything into the upper common cargo hold. They’d sort later.
The stream of people pouring out of the monastery, he realized, was larger than he’d anticipated. Every woman and every child carried a bag or pack—nothing large. But they were going to need space, and while the Taag av Sookyn had a generous passenger hold, he was going to be exceeding its limitations severely.
Above, the shouts of men suddenly came clearer. He realized those shouts had started coming from the tunnels. Some of them were shouts in Tonk, some in Trade, and some in a language or languages that he did not know. He heard the ringing clashes of swords.
Ah, Ethebet, here it came.
His men on the deck lowered the next crate full of treasure so fast that the ropes slipped through their hands. Treasure poured onto the deck, some of it going down the chute, much of it spraying and clattering across the wood where it would serve as obstacles for the sailors and, if they were needed, the marines. Aaran swore.
If something had to fall partway down the cliffs, better the treasure than children, though.
Then the men he’d sent into the tunnels came back out, mo
ving fast. They and the men who had run the operation at the top of the ledge came down both paths, moving with less assurance than the strange-eyed women.
And after them, more women, these exclusively wearing black. They ran down the paths as his men cleared them, and jumped gracefully to the docks, silent and inhumanly fast. And then they vanished down into the passenger hold as if they knew which way to go.
He watched a lavishly dressed woman turn at the top, take a torch, and toss it into the tunnel. She and a black-robed woman then closed the heavy door, wedging something into three different places along its edge. Finished, they turned and raced at a full run down the paths, jumped to the deck, and ran directly to him. The woman in the elaborate garb said, “Go. Quickly. It’s going to explode any moment; we need to be well clear.”
Aaran shouted urgent retreat and raced to the tillers, the deck crew cast off, and the windmen gave them a hard breeze.
And the Taag was off.
The well-dressed woman—who for all her assurance was startlingly young—and her companion in black strode back to him. He could not see many details of her face, but she, too, had frightening eyes. She said in flawless, if accented, Tonk, “I’m Hawkspar. I’m the one who called you. Thank you for risking so much to come for us. We will move out of your way for now, to permit you to work. But when we are to a point of some safety, I must talk with you.”
“And I with you,” he said. He steered the ship clear of the little harbor’s mouth, and as he did, heard a rumble as if the earth were blowing itself apart. He looked behind them and caught a glimpse of fire erupting from the tunnel mouth, and of debris exploding toward the ship. He cut it hard to port, hearing the splash of objects going into the water behind him. He hung on, the windmen blew, and he steered the Taag’s tail out of the path of danger.
