Blackdog (63 page)

There was a warehouse next to the Chiefs’ Hall, where once Siyd Rostvadim's father had stored the Marakander goods he dealt in. Now it was a granary, a storehouse of tithes extracted from the so-called bond-folk who worked what had once been lands of the septs for the governor, and for Siyd Rostvadim and the others who had grown fat on Governor Ketsim's scraps. It was never guarded by native Serakallashi, the conscript militia was not trusted so far. Usually it was the Lissavakaili conscripts…certainly every time she had gone by during the day, there had been a bored Lissavakaili boy sitting whittling on the roof.

Jerusha ran, not bothering with concealment, for the ladder that led to the second-floor door. They hadn't pulled it up. The lower door was heavily barred from within, of course, and they wouldn't open that for any knocking, even if they heard it. But this upper door would open into a loft, where once upon a time some kin-servant's family or unmarried sons and daughters might have lived, guarding the family goods. Jerusha tapped lightly at it, then pounded with her fist, an eye on the young flames below. No life in the fire-tubes yet.

A narrow slot in the door slid open at eye-level. “What?” someone demanded tersely, and Jerusha let out a breath. She could see nothing, but the accent belonged to the mountains. “Great Gods, the square's on fire!” he added, turning away. “Ring your bell—”

“No, don't!” Jerusha said. “In Attalissa's name!”

That gave them pause. She heard silence, and breathing. Two or three of them, crowding close.

“Did the governor tell you why he left, last night?”

“Why should he?” Sullen.

“You heard some of your comrades were killed?”

“Not our comrades. Serakallashi killing Serakallashi.”

“Oh, right, and you aren't all Tamghati soldiers? Didn't it strike you as odd that you weren't turned out to execute random folk on the street in revenge? That's what usually happens when one of you lot gets murdered, isn't it? Did you see the bodies? Did they
let
you see the bodies? Or was it Tamghat's own
noekar
and mercenaries who dragged them all off to a pit in the desert before the sun was ever up?”

The silence was interested. Good.

“They tried to stop the Blackdog on his way back to the mountains,” Jerusha said. “You can guess what was left of those poor children—folk of Serakallash and no more wanting to be the Blackdog's enemy than you. Attalissa has returned. Your goddess is on her way to Lissavakail right now. You're not little children who grew up with the Lake-Lord's lies; you know she was never carried off by any demon, you know that she fled Tamghat, to grow into her strength in hiding. Well, now she's back. And are you going to be standing with the Tamghati, when the sisters and the militias that have been preparing in secret all these years rise up in your home valleys?”

Something in the square below was sputtering sparks.

“The Old Lady of the free temple, and there is one, believe me, sent me with a message. Leave now. Get your brothers from the barracks and head back to your mountains. Because our goddess has returned as well, and you don't want to be in Serakallash as our enemies in about…now.”

Great Gods let it not burst right here in the square, into what it was meant to be, a pretty flower of flame. Real signalling fire-tubes such as the Nabbani emperor's soldiers used were not something her Over-Malagru caravaneer had been able to get for any price.

With a hiss, the tube was gone. Jerusha caught herself, braced against the door. A sound like
thwump
, and a red peony of fire burst high overhead. Then bangs, and red stars drifted slowly to earth. Another
thwump
, no bang. Blinding white light. Then nothing. Two fuses had failed. Not quite so impressive as she had hoped. But even the one cluster of bangs was enough, a sound such as they had never heard.

Dogs barked and bayed. Serakallash was awake.

Rattle of chains and bars and the door jerked open. Jerusha tumbled in, landing on hands and knees.

“We'll be killed,” one voice was still protesting. “He'll execute us like the girls after Ishkul Valley.”

“We'll certainly be killed if we stay here,” said the one who had answered the door. “You heard her. Attalissa's come home and the Blackdog's going ahead of us.” He gave Jerusha a nod, almost a bow, stepped over her, and scampered down the ladder.

“Damn it…” But the reluctant one was shoved forward by the third, and they both scrambled down and ran, heading for the lane that led to the Lissavakaili barracks, which had once been the Battu'um Hall.

Jerusha picked herself up, rescued her firepot, pulled the door to behind her, and felt her way across the dark room. The very air tasted of dust.

The loft room opened onto others. Thin window-slits too small for a child to slide through let in the faintest starlight. She found by feel that most of the rooms held sacks and jars of grain, even up here. Sera damn him, this must be most of last summer's harvest, hoarded here, while the farming folk eked out their meals with burdock root and wild onion, and their babies fell sick and died. Out on the gallery that ran around below the roof and the stairs descending to the main floor she had to feel her way again. The great space was partitioned into bays along a central aisle. Touch told her that bins lined the walls, baskets were stacked high, and storage jars. Some were greasy-slick. Were the fools stockpiling oil here, too? It took a lot of theft to feed Tamghat's vast mercenary force. The main doors were locked as well as barred, but her fingers found the key standing in the lock. She turned it, heaved the massive bar free, almost more than she could lift, and pulled the door open a crack, letting in the dim firelight and smoky air and a babble of voices. Ignoring them, she walked back to the centre of the warehouse, took the lid from her firepot, and whirled it on its chain. The coals flared to scarlet. She let the chain go, watched it a moment, soaring to land in a bin, coals scattering.

She waited long enough to see that it caught, good wheat serving a better end than fattening Tamghat's folk, and then slid out the great door, leaving it ajar.

Outside, the market square was transformed. Men and women ran shouting with jars of water from private wells, or stood in anxious clusters, checking over their shoulders for Tamghati patrols. No one had thought to sound the alarm bell in the tower of the Chiefs’ Hall yet. There were watchmen who lived in the remaining private warehouses and the masters who lived above their workshops, and those who were staying in the several sept-halls that overlooked the square. And, of course, the people of the governor's house. No, that door was still closed tight. Did Siyd, the governor's deputy, mean to lurk in hiding while others took charge? Not she. She was dressing herself, not to look so much a fool as all these folk in shirts and blankets.

Divine will, or fate such as the Northrons believed. Jerusha went up the steps to the Chiefs’ Hall door, and waited. Waited. Damn Siyd,
was
she going to simply sleep through the crisis? The pitiful rubbish fires would be put out at this rate, without the alarm ever having sounded. No, there was that exposed corner of the former Chiefs’ Hall and somehow no one seemed to be carrying water to that. A few nudges, a few people looking, turning away not to see. But that spread too slowly within the wall.

Red light spilled from the doorway of the granary, and a roaring that could not be ignored. People turned, almost slowly, to look. The sensible few headed for the opposite side of the square.

The clunk of a lock at last. A couple of Rostvadim warriors and a pair of Grasslanders, all fully dressed and armed.

Siyd in the middle of them, scowling. Her hair was grey, now, and her face tight. Perhaps she did not find it so easy, keeping her own sept sweet in the face of greater and greater extortions, keeping her Tamghati masters happy.

“Fools!” Siyd said, though whether she meant those trying to put out the fires, or those she thought had set them, it was hard to say. “Devils take them, what are they playing at? The hall's on fire, don't just stand there!”

The last fire-tubes went off, some spark suddenly reaching them. They streaked crookedly, hissing, skyward, and burst with bangs and flowers and stars of green and white. People screamed and covered their heads, and more were appearing in the square all the time.

And while the bodyguard were all craning to look, Jerusha stepped away from the wall and swung two-handed at Siyd's unprotected throat. She'd sharpened her knife special, but the sax was in her hands before she remembered, and it was sharp, Great Gods, but it was sharp, Koneh had put a good edge on it for her. Siyd's head lolled stupidly sideways, cunning little eyes still staring, and her mouth gaped. So did her throat. No wizard or devil or whatever it was had come bringing miracles last night was here to save her. Blood spurted everywhere.

“That's for Davvy,” Jerusha sang, and her voice cracked. She leapt from the side of the stairs as one of the guard swung at her, shouting—they were all shouting, on the stairs and in the square. She landed badly, stumbled, but no one moved to grab her. The shouting was overwhelmed, briefly, by a thundering crash. The square was suddenly silent, frozen. Even Jerusha forgot to run.

That would be the loft and gallery in the granary coming down. She wouldn't have guessed the pillars and beams so weak, to fail so quickly. Dry with age?

And all the grain-dust that would rise from the shattering jars and burst sacks…

Jerusha ran and she wasn't alone. But two of the men hard on her heels were the Tamghati Grasslanders. One tripped, was tripped, and never got up, someone stooping with a knife. A horse burst from an ally ahead and Jerusha raised her blade—Firebird. Koneh.

He held out a hand, reining Firebird in snorting and plunging, and she scrambled and was dragged up behind him, clutching him tight.

That other ride, another battle in the square, Sister Enneas holding her upright…

“The well!” she screamed in Koneh's ear.

More horses swept out around them—young men and women, some she knew—Sera save, it was the Serakallashi conscript troop. Turned out to cut down the rebellion?

“Don't follow me!” Koneh shouted. “Clear out the damned Tamghati from the Chiefs’ Hall.”

“It's burning!” Jerusha shrieked. At least, it damned well ought to be. Now the bell began to jangle, not the alarm for fire, not the summons to an announcement by the chiefs, just a wild, broken rhythm, a peal of panic.

“I went to see if your fire would lure away the guards on the conscripts’ door and the stables,” Koneh said over his shoulder, as the milling riders were left behind. “I figured I could make it—I thought the patrols would already be heading for the square. They weren't, but I dodged them. And when I got to the barracks our boys and girls were already out and saddling their horses. It was Lissavakaili on duty keeping them locked in, and the mountain men had unlocked ‘em, the men's side of the barracks and the women's both, and told ‘em to rise up for their goddess. How did you manage that?”

“I asked the Lissavakaili nicely to go home. They thought that sounded like a good idea.”

“You're beautiful, you know.”

“Koneh!”

A quick grin over his shoulder as they headed down the alley that was the shortcut from the caravanserai ridge to the spring. This end of town was silent, deserted. But it wouldn't stay that way. They'd all be up on the roofs, awake and wondering, and before long the gates of the compounds would open…

“Fine, you were fairly beautiful too, when that Grasslander with the spear was so close. But that doesn't mean I fancy you any more than I did yesterday. Great Gods, what's wrong with these people?”

The small group she had left digging out the spring had grown smaller, and only a few, Elsinna and her father among them, were digging. At least the skulls—skulls and random jawbones—were all laid out nearby, though how they'd ever be claimed by their families now…perhaps Sera could name them.

“People started leaving when your fire-tubes went off,” Mooshka said, standing up to his waist in a dry pit, leaning on a spade. She had not thought her father knew she had kept any of the fire-tubes. “They thought it was wizardry, Tamghat attacking us again.”

“Idiots.
”

“I did try to tell them it was just a trick to keep the Tamghati and their lapdogs busy in town.” He grinned, scratched his beard. “You don't think setting fire to the whole town was a bit excessive, though?”

“I didn't—” Jerusha looked over her shoulder. The sky was lit orange, smoke rolling up like thunderclouds, reflecting down the livid light. “It's just the tribute granary.” Sera grant that was so. And the old Chiefs’ Hall, if the onlookers weren't quicker with the water than they'd been till now.

“Could have used that grain,” someone else said thoughtfully.

“We weren't going to have a chance to,” she snapped. “It was Tamghat's grain, it was all headed for the mountains. And while you're finding fault here, the conscripts are taking back the town.”

“I wasn't finding fault, Mistress Jerusha, I was just saying…” The man shrugged and picked up a spade again. “Well, what's to stop the Lake-Lord coming back and cutting off all our heads this time, that's all.”

“Sera,” she said, which wasn't the most reassuring answer, Sera having been defeated so thoroughly last time. “And Attalissa.”

Great Gods, she hung all their lives and the future of her folk on belief in a sickly caravan-guard. She had believed because Mooshka had believed, because he had seen a man he thought he knew turn into a monstrous dog. And because Elsinna stared at her with those glorious amber eyes and said, “Sera will come back.”

Jerusha sighed. She had never felt so tired in her life. “Have you got the spring clear?”

“We're down to rock,” her uncle said. “But it's dry, bone dry.” Ill-chosen phrase. Maybe it was a physician's humour.

A woman heaved out a last scraping of sand and sat down on the rock ledge that had once been the edge of the pool. “Now what? Do we pray?”

“Water,” Elsinna said. “She's a goddess. She needs water, not stone.”