“Will they come back?” Miri asked hesitantly.
“Not likely. If they tried, the Kitran would catch them on the road and cut them down. It’d be like hunting rabbits. No, they will stay where they are if they have any sense.”
“What about the army in Birumaz?”
“Vice Commander Sorst sent a runner last night. With luck, two cavalry brigades will show up in four or five days.”
Four or five days? Miri didn’t think the town could hold out for that long. They were outnumbered three to one, many of the defenders were untrained, and the walls were modest tree trunks driven into the earth and not very solid looking at all. She slowed down and let Diasu pat her face with a damp cloth. Her formal dress suddenly seemed heavy and confining.
The captain, guessing her thoughts, said quietly, “Our best hope is that the enemy out there, finding us a tough nut to crack open, will go off in search of easier pickings.” He paused and said grimly, “If, however, they have been given iron orders to take Marsolil, then we must all pray to Ekon that the Scythe will drop what they are doing and come north as fast as the wind blows.”
At the east gate, Miri had to force herself to be cheerful and to feign an interest in the soldiers on duty. She was tired and knew she should eat although her stomach was uneasy. Diasu, seeing her mistress in some distress, begged leave to return to the inn. Captain Ronant told the men to thank her for coming to see them. The regular soldiers clashed their swords together and gave a shout: “Birumaz and Kirdar!”
The sun set as the two women returned to the inn. No clouds this evening, only an empty sky of dark blue fading to black. Miri ate some soup and drank a whole pot of tea, after which she felt much better. Up in their room, Diasu helped her out of her formal dress, and she lay down to rest.
Miri realized that she had never actually seen even one of the Kitran cavalry, as the Birumaz soldiers didn’t let her go up on the walls. So much for living out the story of Princess Juksora. But, as she reminded herself, she wasn’t a princess, and Juksora had perished shortly after Birumaz’s fall. Hopefully her own life would not come to an end sometime in the next few days.
Miri startled upright. Her room was dark as coal, but the strange noises that reached her ears and woke her were the sounds of fighting—of that she had no doubt. Shouts, cries, banging noises like the sound of metal pots hitting together. Then the drums on the walls started. Dum-dum-dum, pause, dum-dum-dum, pause. Even Miri knew what that meant: Hold the line. Diasu reached over and held her hand. She was trembling; they both were.
“Mistress, I’m frightened.” Diasu’s voice was ragged. “What’s going to happen?”
“The men will defend the walls. Soldiers from Birumaz or the Scythe or elsewhere will come to drive the Kitran away.”
Diasu was not comforted by Miri’s words. For the first time in more than a year, Diasu burst into tears. Miri tried to comfort her, patting her on the back.
What was she supposed to do? What could she do? What did the noblewomen in Birumaz do when the siege began and the men were on the walls defending the city? The histories didn’t talk about that. Pray to Ekon? Write poems? Sew? Sleep? Practice on the timbal? Miri had a vision of herself, sitting out on a rug in the middle of the town square, playing melancholy tunes for an audience of women and children while the fighting raged all around the town. An impossibility, of course; she hadn’t brought the instrument. Unlike her, the timbal was safe at home in Birumaz.
She thought of Sorst; in her mind, he was on the wall. She pictured him defending the east gate, knocking faceless Kitrans off ladders, blocking arrows with a shield on one arm. But what if he were injured? What if an unlucky arrow came like a thief in the night from an unexpected direction? He would need to be taken care of. What did she know of medicine? Almost nothing. Yet what was needed? Clean cloth for bandages, hot water, crushed tea leaves, a tolerance for blood? At her age, she wasn’t squeamish about blood.
Miri went over to her trunk and pulled out her black-and-gray traveling robe; she could tell which one it was by feel alone.
“I’m going out to the east gate to see if I can help with any injured,” she told Diasu. Her voice sounded wavy and irresolute in her own ears.
“Mistress! Please, no. Please don’t go. I can’t…I’m too scared.”
“It all right, Diasu. I’ll be fine. You can stay here.” She paused, and then she said, “You have been the best maid I ever had.”
Diasu just kept crying. Miri wasn’t sure if Diasu understood what Miri was telling her, but perhaps that was for the best. Leaving her weeping maidservant, she hurried out of the room and down the stairs.
In the kitchen, the innkeeper’s wife was making steamed buns and chopping vegetables.
“I need clean cloths and tea leaves,” Miri told her. “I’m going to tend to the wounded.”
“Yes, my lady, right here.”
The woman showed Miri a box of dish rags and, inside the larder, a sack half-full of tightly rolled tea leaves. Miri laid out one of the bigger dishrags and placed two handfuls of the aromatic tea leaves onto it, then tied it up into a bundle. She made a similar bundle out of a half dozen of the other dishrags. As she tied up the bundle, she thought about money and took three more silver pieces out from the bag around her neck. As she did so, her fingers brushed against her small purity knife, which she had worn ever since her body had listened to the moon’s call. She pulled on the cord and hung the small silver knife on the outside of her robe.
She placed the rounded pieces of silver on the work table, ignoring the rice flour.
“Payment in advance,” Miri said to the woman. “Hide some of the money, just in case.”
“Yes, my lady. Ekon’s blessing upon you.”
Carrying a bundle in each hand, she went out of the kitchen door and into the rear alley. Moving swiftly, Miri went towards the east gate and the sounds of fighting. Doing something kept her mind away from fear. Oh, the fear was there: a big black ball of spikes tipped with pain. If she didn’t stop, if she didn’t think about it, the fear didn’t control her. Miri didn’t blame Diasu for succumbing to her fears; she was, after all, just a shopkeeper’s daughter. Diasu hadn’t been raised with the notion that family honor was all important and that, even for women, sometimes honor required risking death. She told herself that as she walked alone down the street.
The lies we tell ourselves that mask our secret desires.
That’s what the Serice poet Orjan had written many years ago. He was poet of the Gold Kingdom, very popular in Shila. Another of his couplets came unbidden to her mind:
The heart desires what it will,
all reason is but a breath of wind against stone.
Miri shook her head. Why was she thinking about Orjan’s poetry at a time like this?
The drums were loud, and torches were on the gate. Fires blazed along the street. The smell of blood and other, fouler stenches came up and assaulted her. She held the rag sack of tea leaves up to her face and continued. A body lay by the side of the street; judging from the clothing, it was a townsman. An arrow stuck grotesquely out of his face. He was cold to the touch of her nervous hand.
Onward.
A man, his arms covered in black blood, was tending to another man who was moaning by the fire, gripping his left leg tightly. He must be the soldier-doctor for this part of the wall. “I have brought clean rags and some tea leaves,” she said to him.
“Give me one of each. Set the others someplace near where they won’t get kicked over.”
He looked up at her as she gave him what he asked, and then his voice changed. “Lady Kirdar, what are you doing here?”
“Helping,” she said.
The sound of the fighting had trailed off. Above her, she heard a bow twang and then the voice of Sorst.
“Don’t waste arrows! Save them for when they come back.”
“I’m sorry, Jorma,” the doctor said to the man. “You are for it. I can’t stop the bleeding.”
“It’s fine,” said the man weakly, “a divine Adesari has come for me.”
He was looking straight at her as he said it. Miri forced herself to look back at the man, holding his gaze until his eyes rolled up, and he stopped breathing.
A man took her by the arm; it was Sorst. “What are you doing here, my lady? It’s not safe here.”
“I came to help the wounded.” Her words were flat. She had never seen a man bleed to death before.
Sorst pushed up his helmet and wiped his face. “I can’t give you orders, Lady Kirdar. But if you were to be injured, or worse, while you were here, there would be hell for all of us. Even if we won.”
“And will we win, Sorst of the Rutal-lil?”
Sorst made as if to speak and then beckoned her to follow him away from the fire. Beside the wall of stakes, he stopped and turned to her.
“I don’t know if we can hold them off. We don’t have enough men. This is an elite unit we are fighting. They may have been just testing the gates with this attack. If their commander is skilled, he will find the unwatched sections of the walls, pry them open at several points and then…” Sorst didn’t complete his words. “The fact that they are not firing fire arrows over the walls worries me.”
“Why?”
“You can’t loot a burned town. Often in the last war, the Kitran would take a town, loot it, round up the young women and children for slaves, kill the rest, and then burn the town to the ground. Is this their plan now? Lady, you should go to the nunnery. If the town falls, the Kitran may leave it unharmed. Ekon knows the anger it would arouse if the Kitran defiled a nunnery. Even the Rutal-lil commanders would demand action from King Olvin.”
What Sorst said sounded true. If she stayed, she would be a distraction. If she were just a peasant woman or one of the townsfolk, it would be different. But she was what she was. Miri knew she had to go back, but she felt an almost overwhelming urge to wrap her arms around the man and bury her face against his chest.
She restrained herself. “Sorst, may Ekon preserve you and bless you.”
“He already has, Lady Kirdar. We may meet again—if not tomorrow, then in another life.” Sorst turned and walked back to his men at the gate.
Miri walked slowly back to the center of town; a boy ran past, heading the opposite direction from her. At the commander’s tent, she found Captain Ronant with just a handful of guards around him. He was listening to a different boy’s garbled report from the west gate. After the boy finished, the captain gave an order, and two of this guards saluted and went out into the night. Ronant offered Miri a chair.
“I was just at the east gate, bringing bandages and tea leaves.”
“What did you see?”
“One soldier died, one townsman was dead. Another man had a badly injured leg. There may have been other minor injuries.”
“Did you see Vice Commander Sorst?”
“I did. He said he was worried that the Kitran were not shooting fire arrows over the wall.”
Captain Ronant nodded; the muscles around his jaw were rigid. “Yes, if all the enemy wanted was to cause fear, then starting a few fires would serve. So far, they have tested the three gates, and then they pulled back. No fire arrows. They are well coordinated.”
“What can I do?” Miri asked.
“Nothing. This is our work now.”
“Sorst suggested I hide in the nunnery,” Miri said with a hint of question in her voice.
“Not a bad suggestion, but we will make our stand here, at the official’s residence,” Ronant replied. “I won’t send my soldiers up near the holy place. Only Ekon will be defending it.”
Miri waited uneasily for an hour, listening to the reports from the rest of the town. The drums stopped; the attacks had halted. Gradually her hopes rose. Perhaps the Kitran were looking for easier pickings than a town defended by an alert and active garrison? Perhaps the Scythe was coming and the enemy had learned of it and retreated?
After midnight, Miri left the captain’s tent and went out into the streets. First, she checked in at the inn and found Diasu asleep. Then she headed up the hill heading to the nunnery. She hadn’t decided to hide there, but she knew she could see all around the town from the gate. At the sacred gate she stopped and rested, looking out over the dark tiled houses, over walls with their torches and the precarious watchtowers that had been hastily set up during the day. Beyond the town, the fireflies could be seen. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, flickering on and off in all directions. The river, called the Marso here, though it changed its name as it neared the sea, was a pen’s width of pure black. On the far bank, she could see dim flashes as well.
Then all hell broke loose. For the first time, the noise of Kitran horns and gongs sounded out. Miri had heard that discordant jangle before, when she visited Sorabol. The Kitran Nakovit always made a big show of his weekly visit with the king; his cavalry and soldiers marched down the main street accompanied by other Kitran making a terrible din. She couldn’t tell what was happening, but from the sounds growing louder and louder, there was fighting throughout the town. Had the Kitran broken through the walls, as Sorst feared? It seemed likely.
Now Miri really was afraid. Should she go back to the inn? Take refuge in the official’s residence? Or stay here as Sorst had suggested? While she hesitated, the sound of the drum from the west gate went silent. A new drum began to beat from the center of the town.
The west gate has fallen.
Running down into the middle of fight in the town seemed like a stupid way to die. So she turned and hurried up to the nunnery door and knocked on it. She knocked on the door for a full minute, but there was no response. She sat down beside the door and waited and then knocked on it again. She repeated this several more times. She thought she heard the drums from the south gate fall silent while she anxiously waited for a response from within.
Finally, a voice came out through the brass wheel of right thinking that was set in the middle of the door. “Who is there?” It was the voice of the abbess.
“Grandmother, it is Miri of House Kirdar. I request sanctuary.”
The door bolts rasped against their confinements, and then the door opened.
“Very well, child. You can wait with me here in the antechamber. We are all praying to Ekon for the souls of the dead.”
The abbess closed the door and barred it again. The noise of fighting became faint, a distant echo from a different world. Miri could hear the voices of the other nuns and novices chanting prayers in the courtyard. Time dragged. Miri wondered why no one else came up to the nunnery. Did they know they would be turned away? She could mouth the words, but Miri could not pray, could not concentrate. It seemed now only one set of drums was beating out, but not in time, as though by someone who was not trained. Then the faint noise again of the Kitran horns and gongs: ugly, raucous. It went on and on. An hour passed, then two.
“What is the time?” Miri said during a pause in the chanting.
“It is five hours after midnight,” said one of the novices. She had brought water to the abbess and Miri to drink. She was young, and her hair was cut very short. Miri wanted the dawn to come. She wanted the hideous night to end, but she also wondered if dawn would be of any help.
The Kitran horns ceased blowing and now, faintly, the sounds of screams could be heard.
“May Ekon have mercy on us all,” said the abbess. Mi
ri heard her grandmother’s labored breathing. From inside the courtyard there were muffled sobs from the nuns.
A few minutes passed and there came the sounds of clanking metal outside. It was men in armor approaching. Low voices, rough, not speaking the language of Shila. The door was struck with two powerful blows.
“Open up, rebels! This town and all in it are forfeit to the Nakovit.”
The abbess slowly stood, and the door was struck again. She went up to it, twisted a knob in the door, and then spoke through the uncovered hole.
“This is the Nunnery of Eternal Benevolence. The women here are dedicated to the Holy Ekon, most high, most wise. Leave us in peace as we pray for the dead.”
“There is only the Great Eagle of the Northern Sky,” said the voice on the other side. “All other gods bow before his power and strength. If you will not open the door, we will break it down!”
The abbess let out a long sigh and then said, “This is a holy place. If you profane it, you will be cursed. You and everyone with you will suffer for eternity.”
This was greeted with mocking laughter from the Kitran soldiers on the other side.
The battering against the door resumed, now with axes, splitting the wood. Miri could see the door would not last for long. She looked at her grandmother with appalled fear. Her grandmother turned and looked at her.
“Be brave, child. Do not taint your soul with rash acts. The cycle will not be broken till your day of understanding.”
Miri went and knelt beside her grandmother. She said nothing; there was nothing to say and nothing to do but accept the inevitable. Everyone was silent, praying for a miracle.
Several minutes of hacking and wrenching, and finally the doors were pulled open.
As the Kitran soldiers forced their way in, the abbess stepped forward and raised her right hand.
“You profane this sacred place. I curse you, I curse you all. May your souls burn…”
One of the Kitran warriors came forward and knocked the old woman down. Then, casually, as though he had done it many times before, he drew his dagger, stepped on her chest, and slashed the woman’s throat open.
The Fire Sword Page 33
