‘This court acknowledges your request for a trial by branch, citizen. It is your right. You may proceed if both parties are willing, but without our blessing.’
‘Maz, syors,’ said the militant, making another florid bow. He did not bother to hide his satisfaction. ‘May justice be served.’
Without further preamble, he pushed through the crowd of spectators towards the eastern side of the stage.
‘You don’t know the meaning of the word,’ murmured Samiha, beside Tymon. She noticed him watching her and added in a low, terse voice, ‘You—this is unworthy of you. A Grafter does not engage in personal duels.’
‘I don’t see as I have much choice, shanti,’ he replied.
‘There’s always a choice,’ she retorted, moving away from him. ‘Violence breeds violence.’
‘What are you doing, boy?’ Galliano called from the terrace. ‘I thought you were going to refuse the challenge?’
‘It’s all right, Apu,’ he answered, gazing after Samiha with dim resentment. Why did she always have to disapprove of him? He walked back to Galliano’s side and placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he reassured him, summoning up the confidence he did not feel. ‘I have to do this.’
Caro climbed off the platform onto the broken branch beneath. Only his upper body was visible above the level of the stage.
‘Are you coming, Argosi?’ he jeered over his shoulder. ‘Take your weapon from the temple branch, but choose wisely! The branch isn’t what it used to be, since it was desecrated by your brethren.’
‘Remember this is a lawful event, Caro,’ cautioned Samiha, from the edge of the stage. ‘Not an excuse for revenge.’
The audience had already lined up along the eastern rim of the platform. Only the seven remaining judges lingered on the terrace, debating heatedly with one another in Nurian. They ignored Tymon as if he was of no further consequence. He swallowed a sense of injured decency, and left Galliano frowning after him to follow in Caro’s footsteps. The reference to desecration was calculated to incite the crowd; angry catcalls echoed out as he swung his legs over the side of the platform and dropped onto the branch. He landed on a loose piece of bark, almost twisting his ankle. The militant gave a guffaw.
‘Bad luck,’ he sneered. ‘Perhaps it’s an indication of things to come.’
He strode off towards the mutilated edge of the branch. The broken limb was as massive as its counterpart on the west side of the promontory, at least seventy feet in diameter, though the flanks sloped steeply. Lengthwise it came to an abrupt halt twenty feet from the stage. The charred extremity cut a stark silhouette against the sky. Caro knelt on the blackened rim, reaching over the edge. He strained a moment, grimacing with effort. With a sound uncannily like a child’s shriek, a shard of wood broke away in his hand. He lifted up a jagged beam as tall as he was with a jubilant yell.
‘The branch favours me!’ he cried. Answering cheers rose from the spectators on the lip of the stage.
‘Now it’s your turn!’ crowed Caro. ‘Choose well, Argosi!’
Tymon approached the edge of the branch peering over the brink. He was alive to Caro’s reasons for selecting this particular place to fight his duel. The wounded face of the great limb was a mute accusation against any and all Argosians. The boy surveyed the scorched collection of shattered spikes with disgust. He tried to gauge the size of each, seeking one similar to Caro’s. His eye lit on a likely candidate and he leaned forward, closing his fist around the shard. It crumbled to dust in his hand.
‘Choose well!’ repeated the yellow-haired Nurian. ‘A strong club is proof of sincerity.’
He smiled easily, leaning on his great, pointed stake, but there was a tension in his muscles that belied his calm. Tymon’s first flush of anger was cooling. He kept a wary watch on the other man as he manoevered himself closer to the brink of the broken limb. His rival was taller, broader and at least ten years older than he was, a warrior in his physical prime, sure of his power.
‘Having second thoughts?’ Caro whispered, mocking. ‘Yield now if your conscience fails you.’
Tymon did not waste time on an answer. He laid himself on his stomach on the branch and peered over the dizzy drop. Tentacles of fog drifted up to meet him. He stretched his arm down as far as it would go. An updraft stirred his hair, and his fingers brushed against something solid. He grasped the fragment and pulled. The shard was difficult to break loose. When it finally came free the recoil nearly sent him rolling into the gulf. He picked himself up and dusted off his tunic. The piece of wood in his hand was black and gnarled and about the length of his leg. It looked sturdy, but was nowhere near as massive as Caro’s club.
‘Say your Argosi prayers, putar,’ taunted the militant. ‘You’ll need them.’
Excitement rippled through the spectators on the stage. Rows of faces leered down at them. Samiha held out both arms at the front of the crowd, palms outward. She did not look at Tymon, but her whole body radiated her displeasure. The whispering of the throng died away.
‘I remind you both this duel is not a free-for-all,’ she said flatly. ‘You will not exceed three blows. Be ready on my mark.’
Caro retreated a few steps and raised his weapon. Tymon mirrored the move cautiously. Fear clutched at his throat, an animal force, instinctive and irresistible. He wondered if he was making a terrible mistake. But it was too late to withdraw. He registered the downwards sweep of Samiha’s arms. The duel had begun.
Caro’s first lunge was so quick that he was caught off his guard. He lifted his club only just in time to ward off the militant’s strike. The shock of the blow jarred through him and splinters flew into his eyes. When he blinked them clean again he saw Caro step back with an unconcerned smile. Both clubs were still whole. A sigh went up from the audience. Tymon’s arms ached as he lowered his weapon.
‘Bas,’ called Samiha.
‘You were lucky,’ Caro remarked. ‘Luck won’t see you through three rounds, however.’
The boy panted, too breathless to make a reply. The heavy atmosphere of the mora seemed to steal the very air out of his lungs. He glanced at the people pressed together at the edge of the stage. The Freehold guards were right there in the front row, their expressions exultant. This was what the youths of Sheb had been hoping for since his arrival, he reflected—an official extension of the fight on the spur. And there beside them, with her own, entirely different set of expectations, stood Samiha. It was impossible to satisfy both parties. The shanti stared over his head, white-faced. He had lost her for good now, he thought dully. Even if by some fluke he won this contest, she would still be angry with him.
‘On my mark,’ she announced, lifting her arms.
Caro paced forward. ‘We finish what we started in Marak,’ he snarled, raising the bludgeoning shard.
Tymon readied his weapon. He had come to the sobering realisation that he did not have the brute force to withstand Caro. A numb terror took hold of him. Samiha’s hands came down and Caro’s club whistled through the air a heartbeat later. The two shards screeched together, releasing a sharp scent of burnt sap. The force of the blow sent Tymon staggering to one side. He flailed wildly, teetered on the broken rim of the branch and regained his balance only in the nick of time. A great shout went up from the stage.
‘Bas.’ Samiha’s voice rang out like a bell.
‘Ah, you fail, Argosi, you fail!’ chuckled Caro. He barely seemed affected by his exertions at all.
Tymon’s head reeled. Rivulets of sweat stained his tunic. He could not focus properly on his opponent, as if some of the splinters had lodged in his eye. He had not caught Samiha’s last signal but knew that the third round must have begun. Caro was circling him again, his weapon raised and his mouth curled into a greedy smile. The boy’s shoulders throbbed. His arms had lost all their strength. He heaved up his burdensome shard of wood and braced himself for the final blow.
It never came. Far-off, urgent, a cry pierced the breathles
s silence in the arena. A voice rose beyond the confines of the well.
‘Foy!’
There was a pause, a frozen moment. The villagers glanced away from the duel, towards the source of the sound.
‘Bas,’ said Samiha, almost as an afterthought. She frowned at the western stairs.
‘No.’ Caro struck the end of his club against the bark, incensed. ‘We haven’t finished here yet.’
But no one was watching him any more. Footsteps thudded on the rim of the arena, and a man appeared at the top of the stairs, waving his arms to the people below.
‘Foy!’ he called, as he hastened down the steps. ‘Foy!’
‘No,’ Caro whispered furiously.
In a sudden lurch he swung his weapon at Tymon. The boy had no opportunity to lift his own shard of wood or ward off the blow. The instant of danger stretched out to an eternity, as it had in the Marak shrine; all he could do was watch, helpless, as Caro’s club plummeted towards his head. He had time to appreciate with calm certainty that it would split open his skull. No one else noticed the illicit strike. The Freeholders were crowding about the messenger at the foot of the stairs. Foy, foy—the word swept through the arena like a swift wind.
‘Fire.’ Tymon muttered the translation to himself, a distracted echo.
What happened next took place all at once, in a blur, so that he could not remember later which event came first. As he said the word, Oren’s pendant, hidden in the collar of his tunic, glowed with a vivid pulse of heat. Almost simultaneously, Caro’s club burst into flames. The militant skidded to a halt and dropped the burning wood with a stifled oath. He gazed at Tymon in rage and astonishment. A now familiar sense of dizziness washed through the boy, the slight disorientation that seemed to be accessory to the Grafter’s power. On the stage the messenger talked and gesticulated excitedly. The judges had risen from their terrace to join the people gathering about him. Only a few heads turned to note the pair on the broken limb, the smoking remains of the shard on the floor of the stage.
In his bemused state Tymon did not immediately understand what had happened. He could only stare dumbly at Caro. Behind the militant’s anger lurked a terrible fear, the look of a man confronted with something he had thought impossible. For a brief moment, Tymon wondered whether his opponent was going to rush at him and push him over the edge of the branch with his bare hands. He certainly could not have prevented him from doing so, had he tried. But Caro merely collected himself with a visible effort, turned on his heel and vaulted up onto the stage. Relief washed over Tymon. He bowed his head.
‘Come with me, you fool,’ whispered a voice in his ear.
Samiha took hold of his elbow and led him back towards the platform.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked her thickly. His tongue felt swollen and clumsy in his mouth. ‘Is the village on fire?’
‘No, Tymon. The western watch-fires have been lit.’
‘What does that mean?’
She helped him up onto the stage and propelled him towards Galliano, still perched alone at the end of the judges’ terrace.
‘It means we’re under attack, or soon will be,’ she replied quietly. ‘A fleet has been sighted bearing down on the Freehold.’
‘An attack?’ He peered at her in consternation. ‘By the Governor of Marak?’
‘The watch signalled Argosian ships, not colonial dirigibles. Argos has launched a direct assault against us.’
‘But that’s impossible!’ he cried, halting in his tracks.
She waited for him, patient and sad. ‘Why impossible?’ she asked.
‘Because I didn’t See it,’ he whispered dismally. ‘I didn’t See it coming.’
24
There would be a period of about half an hour’s grace between the lighting of the watch fires some ten miles distant from Sheb, and the arrival of the enemy on the Freehold horizon. Although the villagers had long expected another attack, indeed scrupulously planned and drilled for one, everyone was painfully aware of how little time remained. Tymon and Samiha had barely climbed onto the stage before the great drums beneath the terraces began rolling out their urgent warning. All Freeholders who were not already in the arena hurried there in response to the signal. Mothers came trailing infants and bundles of hastily gathered belongings; elders shuffled down the steps on the arms of their grandchildren. Tymon was astounded at the rapidity with which the villagers organised themselves, and by their self-discipline. Their mood was tense but purposeful. All personal quarrels, all questions of pride and politics were forgotten. No one mentioned the outcome of the duel. The whole affair faded to insignificance in the face of an outside threat. Even Caro appeared to have set his criticisms of the judges aside, accepting Laska’s orders without question.
The yellow-haired Nurian was given the task of organising the evacuation. Those unable to fight were to leave immediately for Tree-caves beneath the promontory, and most of the hasty conference in the arena was spent making sure all of Caro’s charges were present and accounted for. To Tymon’s surprise, the militant assumed this less than glamorous role without a murmur of protest. A successful evacuation was the Freehold’s only guarantee of survival and Caro seemed to understand the importance of the job. The Freehold’s one decrepit trading dirigible, too slow to be used in combat, would be sent south to a secret meeting point to pick up the refugees. Those staying behind on the front lines—a pitifully small group, though it included women as well as men, Tymon noted—would join the fugitives if things turned out badly for the village.
The boy was left feeling only embarrassment at his part in the morning’s fiasco. The duel had not even ended in a decisive victory. He had no idea whether he had the right to use the Grafter’s power in such a situation, consciously or not. No one clarified the point for him and in the current circumstances he dared not ask. Despite the fact that he was weary and dispirited, therefore, and that his arms ached from Caro’s blows, he insisted on accepting an assignment on one of the catapults on the western defences. He had convinced himself that there was no other way to make amends for his conspicuous failure to predict the Argosian attack. He was only good at fighting, he thought gloomily. He may as well fight some more.
To his relief, no one objected to the posting, not even Samiha. There were too few able soldiers on the Freehold to quibble about an Argosi on the front lines, and since the fight with Caro, Samiha appeared to be resigned to leaving him to his own devices. He could not shake the sense that she was disappointed in him—and rightly so, he told himself. The facts haunted him as he trooped after the other members of his squadron towards the western stairs. What use was his ability if it foretold the details, but left out the main event? Why was he able to set fire to shards of wood but not predict the arrival of an entire war-fleet? He could have torn off Oren’s pendant and thrown it away in a fit of self-reproach.
‘Tymon.’
Samiha’s voice recalled him from his maudlin thoughts, sent a quick thrill through him as it always did. She caught up with him at the edge of the stage and took his hand in her own. When she spoke, however, it was not to bolster up his confidence or to tell him that she did not blame him for his lack of foresight.
‘Promise me. We get through this without any more heroics,’ she begged.
‘I promise.’ He peered solemnly into her face. ‘I mean it this time, Samiha.’
She made a small noise that could have been either agreement or scepticism and let go of his hand. ‘Sav vay, Tymon. Come back from that catapult in one piece.’
His wilting spirits revived a little and he permitted himself a witticism as he turned back towards the stairs.
‘I’ll see you all when the hard work’s done,’ he grinned.
‘Oh, you’ll be seeing me before that,’ she remarked. ‘I’ll be out on the defences just like you, my friend.’
‘What?’ He almost tripped on the bottom step, shocked. ‘Aren’t you going to the Tree-caves?’
‘No, Argosi, I am
not.’
‘But what about your beliefs? I thought you didn’t hold with violence?’
‘I don’t hold with needless violence, no. I do believe in defending my people.’
‘But, but…’ he stammered, at a loss for words. Even if some of the Freehold women were warriors, he had assumed her position as the Kion would oblige her to accompany the evacuees.
‘I’m not the only member of the Nurian royal house,’ she said softly, as if he had spoken his worries aloud. ‘There are people left to carry on the bloodline if I die.’
‘Why take the chance?’ he protested. ‘We’re all fighting for you, Samiha. I’d rather you didn’t put yourself in unnecessary danger, I really would.’
She smiled. ‘Now,’ she noted, with a distinct purr of satisfaction, ‘you know exactly how I feel regarding you, Argosi.’
And then Laska was calling out her name, beckoning to her from the far side of the arena. She gave Tymon’s hand another quick squeeze and hurried off. He gazed after her, at once exasperated, anxious and admiring.
Catapult seven, dubbed the Flea by the youths assigned to her, was the smallest of three engines defending the west flank of the village. It was positioned on a platform in the twigs above the western spur, conveniently camouflaged by the net of dry vines Tymon had seen on the day of his arrival. The site commanded a wide panorama of the lower canopy and a view of the main docking port. The Lyla had been whisked away by Jamil and Galliano and the end of the spur was empty and still beneath the catapult platform. Far off on the grey horizon sprang the watch fires’ baleful glow. The Flea’s bite was modest, but it was more manoeuverable than its heavier counterparts to the north and south: the neat, compact arm was mounted on a swivelling base and could be pointed in any direction, even back towards the heart of the village. It fired ‘gum-balls’, flammable shot made of dried bird guano that burned—Tymon’s companions informed him, straight-faced—with a distinctive smell of flatulence. A well aimed gum-ball, they hastened to add, could do more serious damage to a dirigible’s flotation sacks than the bark-shot deployed by the larger engines.
Tymon's Flight Page 36
