A Darkness at Sethanon (33 page)

Arutha finished
recounting the previous night’s conversation to Laurie, Baru,
and Roald. The boys had been gone for a day. Martin had not returned
to their quarters, and Arutha thought he knew where he had spent the
night.

Laurie thought
long on what Arutha had said. “So the population is falling.”

“Or so Guy
says.”

“He’s
right,” said a voice from the door.

They looked and
discovered Jimmy and Locklear standing there, each with his arm about
the waist of a pretty girl. Locklear appeared unable to keep his face
in repose. No matter how hard he tried, his mouth seemed determined
to set itself in a grin.

Jimmy introduced
Krinsta and Bronwynn, then said, “The girls showed us the city.
Arutha, there are entire sections standing empty, home after home
with no one living there.” Jimmy looked about and, discovering
a plate of fruit, attacked a pear. “I guess upward of twenty
thousand people lived here once. Now I guess less than half of that.”

“I’ve
already agreed in principle to help Armengar, but the problem is
getting messages back to Yabon. It seems Murmandamus may be lax in
letting people in, but he’s rigorous in seeing no one gets
out.”

“Makes
sense,” said Roald. “Most of those coming north are
heading for his camp anyway. So what if a few blunder into this city
and help. He’s massing his army and can probably drive past
here if he chooses.”

Baru said, “I
think I can get through, if I go alone.” Arutha looked
interested and Baru said, “I am a hillman, and while these
people are kin they are also city people. Only those in the few high
steadings and kraals might have my skill. Moving at night, hiding
during the day, I should be able to cross over into the Yabon Hills.
Once there, no moredhel or goblin would be able to keep pace with
me.”

“Getting
into the Yabon Hills would be the problem,” said Laurie.
“Remember how those trolls had chased that Beasthunter for
what, days? I don’t know.”

“I’ll
think on it, Baru,” said Arutha. “It may be that
desperate gamble is all we have, but perhaps there’s another
way. We might mount a raiding party to get someone up to the crest,
then turn and fight our way back, giving whoever goes south as much
of a head start as possible. It may not be possible, but I’ll
discuss it with Guy. If we can’t discover another choice, I’ll
permit you to try. Though I don’t think alone is necessarily
the best. We managed all right in a small company getting in and out
of Moraelin.” He rose. “If any of you can conceive a
better plan, I’ll welcome it. I am going to join Guy in
inspecting the battlements. If we’re stuck here when the
assault comes, we might as well lend all the aid we may.” He
left the room.

Guy’s hair
blew wildly as they looked out over the plain beyond the city. “I’ve
inspected every inch of this wall, and I still don’t believe
the quality of engineering.”

Arutha could
only agree. The stones used had been cut to a precision undreamed of
by the Masterbuilders and stonemasons of the Kingdom. Running his
hand over a joint, he could barely feel where one stone ended and
another began. “It is a wall that might have defied Segersen’s
engineers had they come.”

“We had
some good engineers in our armies, Arutha. I can’t see how this
wall could be brought down short of a miracle.” He took out his
sword and struck hard enough to make the blade ring, then pointed to
the merlon where he had struck. Arutha inspected the place and saw
only a slight lighter-colour scratch. “It seems a blue granite,
like ironstone, but even harder. It’s a stone common enough to
these mountains, but harder to work than anything I’ve seen.
How it was worked is unknown. And the footings below the plinth are
twenty feet into the earth, thirty feet from front to back. I can’t
even guess how the blocks were moved from the quarries in the
mountains. If you could tunnel under it, the best that might happen
is the entire wall section might sink down and crush you. And you
can’t even do that, because the wall sits atop bedrock.”

Arutha leaned
back against the wall, looking at the city and the citadel beyond.
“This is easily the most defensible city I have ever heard of.
You should be able to handle up to twenty-to-one odds.”

“Ten-to-one’s
the conventional figure for overrunning a castle, but I’m
inclined to agree. Except for one thing: Murmandamus’s damn
magic. He may not be able to bring these walls down, but I’ll
warrant he’s got a means to get past them. Somehow. Else he
wouldn’t be coming.”

“You’re
certain? Why not bottle you up with a small harrying force and move
his army south?”

“He can’t
leave us at his back. He had his way with us for a year before I took
command, and could have bled us to death by now if I hadn’t
changed the rules of the game. Over the last two years I’ve
taught our soldiers everything I know. With Armand and Amos helping
them learn, they now have the advantages of modern warcraft. No,
Murmandamus knows he has an army of seven thousand Armengarians ready
to jump on his rear if he turns his back. He can’t leave us
behind his lines. We’d hamstring him.”

“So he
must rid himself of you first, then turn to the Kingdom.”

“Yes. And
he must do it soon, or he loses another season. It turns to winter
quickly up here. We see snow weeks before the Kingdom. The passes
become blocked in days, sometimes in only hours. Once he has moved
south, he must be victorious, for he cannot move his army north again
until spring. He is on a timetable. He must come within the next two
weeks.”

“So we
must get word out soon.”

Guy nodded.
“Come, let me show you some more.”

Arutha followed
the man, feeling a strange sense of divided loyalties. He knew he
must help the Armengarians, but he still was not comfortable with
Guy. Arutha had come to understand why Guy had done what he did, and
in a strange way he even grudgingly admired him, but he didn’t
like him. And he knew why he didn’t like him: Guy had made him
see a similarity of nature common to them, a willingness to do what
must be done regardless of cost. So far, Arutha had never gone to the
lengths Guy had, but he now understood he might have acted in much
the same way had he been in Guy’s place. It was a discovery
about himself he didn’t particularly like.

They moved
through the city, and Arutha asked about those details observed when
they had first entered Armengar. “Yes,” said Guy. “There
are no clear lines of fire, so that every turn can hide an ambush.
I’ve a city map in the citadel, and the city is as it is by
design rather than chance. Once you see the pattern, it’s easy
to know which directions to choose to reach any given point in the
city, but without knowing what the pattern is, it’s easy to get
turned about, to be led back toward the outer wall.” He pointed
at a building. “Every house lacks windows on the street, and
every roof is an archery platform. This city was built to cost any
attackers dearly.”

Soon they were
inside the citadel, and saw the boys coming across the courtyard.
“Where are the girls?” Arutha asked.

Locklear looked
disappointed. “They had to go do some things before they
reported back for duty.”

Guy studied the
two squires. “Well then, come with us if you’ve nothing
better to do.”

They followed
Guy into the first floor and down to the lift. Guy rang the bell,
giving the code to raise them to the highest roof. Reaching it, they
looked down upon the city and plain beyond. “Armengar.”
His hand swept across the horizon. “There,” he pointed,
“is the Plain of Isbandia, cut across by the Vale of Isbandia,
the limit of our holdings to the north and northwest. The plain
beyond that is Murmandamus’s. To the east, the Edder Forest,
almost as vast as the Blackwood or the Green Heart. We don’t
know much about it, save we can safely lumber at the edges. Anyone
who goes more than a few miles deep tends not to be seen again.”
He pointed to the north. “Beyond the vale is Sar-Sargoth. If
you’re especially bold, you can climb the hills at the north
edge of the vale and look across the plain to see the lights of this
city’s twin.”

Jimmy studied
the war engines upon the roof. “I don’t know a lot about
this, but can those catapults shoot beyond the outer wall?”

“No,”
was all Guy said. “Come along.”

They all moved
back to the lift and Guy pulled the cord. Arutha noticed there was
some code to indicate up or down, and, he supposed, the number of
floors.

They descended
to the ground floor, then lower yet. They reached a subbasement,
several levels below the ground, and Guy led them from the platform.
They passed a giant winch arrangement with a team of four horses
hitched to a large wheel, which Arutha supposed was the power source
for the lift. It certainly looked impressive, with large tongue and
grooved wheels, and strange multiple rope and pulley arrangements.
But Guy ignored the horse team and drivers, walking past them. He
pointed at a large door, barred from the inside. “That’s
the bolt hole out of here. We keep it sealed, for by some fluke or
other, when the door’s open a constant breeze blows through
here, something to be avoided.” Opposite the large door stood
another, which he opened, leading them into a natural tunnel. He took
a strange-looking lantern from beside the door, one that glowed with
a lower level of light than expected. Guy said, “This thing
uses some sort of alchemy to give off light. I don’t understand
it fully, but it works. We risk no flames here. You’ll see
why.”

Jimmy had been
examining the walls and pulled off a white, flaky wax substance. He
rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger and sniffed. “I
understand,” he said, making a face. “Naphtha.”

“Yes.”
Guy looked at Arutha. “He’s a sharp one.”

“So he’s
quick to remind me. How did you know?”

“Remember
at the bridge south of Sarth, last year? The one I fired to keep
Murad and the Black Slayers from crossing? That’s what I used,
distillation of naphtha.”

“Come,”
said Guy taking’them through another door.

The reek of tar
assailed their noses as they entered the chamber. Strange-looking,
large buckets were hung from chains. A dozen shirtless men laboured
to manoeuvre the buckets down into a huge pool of black liquid. The
odd lanterns burned about the cavern, but mostly the place was
shrouded in darkness. “We’ve tunnels honeycombing this
entire mountain, and this stuff is found in all of them. There’s
some natural source of naphtha below and it constantly bubbles to the
surface. We must keep taking it off, or it seeps upward into the
basements of the city, through cracks in the bedrock. If work was
halted, the stuff would be pooling in the cellars of the city within
a few days. But as the Armengarians have been doing this for years,
it’s under control.”

“I can see
why you don’t want to risk a fire,” said Locklear, in
open wonder.

“Fires we
can handle. We’ve had dozens, as recently as last year,
briefly. What we’ve discovered, or rather what the Armengarians
have discovered, is some uses for this stuff we don’t have in
the Kingdom.” He motioned them into another chamber, where odd
looking coils of tubing ran between vats. “Here we do the
distillation, and some of the other mixing. I understand a tenth of
it, but the alchemists can explain. They make all manner of things
from this naphtha, even some odd salves that keep wounds from
festering, but one thing they’ve found is the secret of making
Quegan fire.”

“Quegan
fire!” Arutha exclaimed.

“They
don’t call it that, but it’s the same stuff. The walls
are limestone, and it’s limestone dust that turns naphtha into
Quegan fire oil. Fling it from a catapult and it burns and even water
won’t put it out. That’s why we have to be so careful,
for it doesn’t just burn.” He looked at Locklear. “The
fumes are heavy, hugging the ground, but if you let the fumes build
up, vent them with a lot of air, then hit a spark, the fumes
explode.” He pointed toward a far cavern, loaded up with wooden
barrels. “That storage cave wasn’t there ten years ago.
When a barrel is emptied, it is filled again, or put under water
until used. Some dolt left three empties standing about and somehow a
spark hit one and . . . Just the amount of that stuff which soaks
into the wood, then evaporates, can give off a tremendous explosion.
That’s why we keep the doors closed. The breeze off the
mountains through the bolt hole can vent this entire complex in a day
or two. And if all this went up at once . . .” He let their
imaginations provide the picture. “I’ve had the
Armengarians making this for two years now, to give Murmandamus a
warm welcome when he comes.”

“How many
barrels?” asked Arutha.

“Over
twenty five thousand.”

Arutha was
staggered. When he had met Amos, the pirate had had two hundred
barrels in the hold of his ship, a fact not known to the Tsurani
raiders who had set fire to his ship. When it had gone up, it had
blown a column of flames hundreds of feet into the air, engulfing the
ship in an instant, incinerating it within minutes. The light of the
flames had been seen for miles up and down the coast. If half the
town hadn’t already been burned by Tsurani raiders the fire
would have devastated Crydee. “That’s enough . . .”

“To fire
the entire city,” finished Guy.

“Why so
much?” asked Jimmy.

“Something
you must understand, all of you. The Armengarians have never thought
of leaving here. In their judgment, there’s no other place to
find refuge. They came north to flee the Kingdom, so they thought
they couldn’t return south. On every side they saw enemies.
Should the worst occur, they’ll fire this city rather than let
Murmandamus capture it. I’ve developed a plan beyond that, but
in either case, a lot of fire could prove useful.” He returned
toward the tunnel leading to the lift, the others following behind.