Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (41 page)

The dust settled, revealing a hole bashed through the wall to a neighbouring tunnel, and Ryllandaras, blinking, shaking the stone dust from his head.

‘I’ll twist your head off if I have to!’ Mara called, her voice taut with anger, and perhaps a measure of fear.

The beast’s lips drew back into something like a mockery of a smile, revealing black gums and canines the length of daggers. ‘You can try,’ he growled with a panting, jackal-like laugh.

Ho set a hand to his hip, ran the other over his brush-cut grey stubble, and looked to the ceiling. ‘Not going to make it easy, are you?’ He motioned to everyone. ‘Grab a chain and pull . . .’

*

A sharp jab woke Iko. She opened one eye, fully aware, to see Hallens peering down at her, a fierce grin at her lips. ‘Ready yourself, little sister. Word has come. We leave immediately.’

She jumped to her feet, pulled her quilted aketon over her head, asked, ‘Where?’

But Hallens had already moved on.

Iko yanked on her mail coat, belted it, and threw her sheathed blade over her head and on to her back. All around, her fellow Sword-Dancers readied themselves. All was silent but for the soft tinkle of fine mail armour and the shush of leather sandals. At the doors, sisters signed commands:
double file, quick
.

They formed up and set out across the gardens. Two sisters waited there. Knotted ropes had already been secured over the wall. When Iko reached the top she glimpsed the sprawled shapes of palace guards among the bushes – unconscious only, she hoped, as she bore them no particular ill will.

Their route took them south through the empty night-time streets; the city’s own strict curfew aided them in their passage. They were running in double file, as swiftly as was possible in potentially hostile territory. Sisters posted at turns, or forced-open posterns or minor gates, directed them on then joined the rear of the file as it passed. Soon, Iko knew, it would be her turn to be posted as they cycled through their number.

When she reached the fore, Hallens was there giving commands. At this point they had reached a section of the second-last of the ringed rounds, the Inner, and were next to the tallest building in sight. Its third-storey roof was pitched, which was unusual for the city, and allowed the easiest access to the parapets rearing above. A sister was already at the top straddling the ridge, readying ropes. Hallens nodded to Iko and another, Gisel, to make the climb. They started up the building’s side, cat-walked up the steeply pitched roof, and took hold of the rope.

Iko went first. The ropes were knotted and she climbed by alternately raising hands and feet. So far their blazing speed had served them well; if any alarms were being sounded, they’d left them far behind. The climb was strenuous, and after the months of waiting she was in far from her best shape, but the adrenalin of action drove her on. She slid in through a crenel and fell to the catwalk to roll to a crouch, then froze.

A guard was approaching from less than thirty feet away; perhaps he was on patrol, or the scraping of the iron grapnel had drawn him, but in any case her sudden appearance had shocked him as well. Only now did he begin to raise the crossbow in his hands.

She charged, eyes fixed on him, searching for the telltale signs of imminent firing. Luckily the lad gave them: a sharp inhale and that rise and tensing of the shoulders. She fell, rolling. The bolt cut the air above her. She came up but was still short of her target and had to roll once more, coming up with one arm to brush aside the weapon and the other jabbing, fingers straightened, up into the throat.

She caught both him and the weapon as he fell choking, hands clutching at his neck. She pressed a hand over his mouth and whispered, close: ‘Hush now – it’s all right. It’s over. You did your best. Hush now . . .’

He strained for breath one last time. Terror of death filled his wild eyes as his gaze pleaded with her. Then they lost focus, easing into a fixed empty stare. She straightened from the corpse.

Behind, her sisters were descending the wall on the outside.

She continued to stare down at the body, studying the clean face. A boy. Just a lad. Perhaps forced into the watch, handed a weapon, and told to walk the walls. Hardly any training at all. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair at all.

Steps behind and Hallens stood with her. She too studied the dead youth, then turned to her. ‘That must have been a hard one.’ She motioned to the sisters waiting their turn. ‘Take the rear.’

Somehow unable to speak, Iko merely nodded.

They ran in double file along the streets of the Outer Round. To Iko’s growing surprise and dismay she realized that they must be headed to one of the main city gates. If their mission was to take and hold the gate how could they hope to prevail against the city mages? It was plain suicide – they would be brushed from the position in an instant.

Being at the very rear she did not have to participate in the various skirmishes that accompanied the taking of the gate. All was over in a bare few minutes. She stepped over fallen Heng guards, found kicked-in doors and broken furniture. The counterweights were released, initiating a great shuddering and groaning within the walls, and the enormous slabs of iron-plated wood – strong enough to withstand the beast Ryllandaras – began grinding open. Iko joined Hallens and five sisters waiting at the mouth of the entrance tunnel; the rest of the Sword-Dancers had spread out to hold the gatehouses and adjoining parapets. Without, the dark of mid-night betrayed no movement.

Iko looked to Hallens who stood with arms crossed, displaying no unease. ‘Where are they?’ she whispered. ‘A city mage will be here soon.’

Hallens merely lifted her broad shoulders in a shrug. ‘We will fulfil our mission.’

Then noise brought Iko’s attention to the raised road outside. Dark shapes now rose from all sides. They seemed to swarm the road, advancing in a tide. Kan Elites, their tabards and gear smeared in soot, came jogging in. They parted, swerving to the right and left of the main way. One halted before Hallens and nodded. ‘Hallens,’ he said.

‘Kuth.’

‘You are relieved.’

Hallens inclined her assent. ‘We’ll hang about, if it’s all the same to you.’

He answered the assent, gave a drawled, ‘Always welcome,’ then turned to ordering his troops.

Bells now clamoured all about the city and the sounds of fighting echoed from far down the main avenue. A long column of green-coated regulars was advancing up the south road. They must already have been on the move even as she and her sisters took the gate, Iko realized. ‘Why have we decided to attack tonight?’ she asked Hallens.

The captain considered, tilting her head in thought. ‘Must have been a tip. A Hengan traitor sending word that now was a good time for some reason.’

Iko nodded at that. Yes, that was how most sieges ended. Betrayal from within. ‘So it is over, then. The city taken.’

Hallens eyed her in tolerant amusement. ‘This is only the first wall. Three more nested defences face us now. Each as strong as the first.’

As if on cue, crossbow bolts came arcing down among them, smacking into wood or skittering from stone. Everyone ducked behind cover even as the first ranks of the regulars came marching up the tunnel and followed directions to split to right and left.

‘You see?’ Hallens said from her side of the guard-post doorway where they’d taken cover. ‘Each inner wall is taller than the outer. They can shoot us at will.’

‘And where are the mages?’

Hallens’ answering grin was knowing. ‘Where indeed?’

Iko was shocked. ‘You think it was they? Betrayed their mistress?’

‘Chulalorn might have given them a better offer.’ Hallens shrugged again. ‘It’s possible.’

As a trained warrior, Iko was raised to value honour and duty above all. But she was not naïve or some callow youth; she understood that others carried far looser interpretations of those words than she – and that some knew them not at all. Still, it was unsettling. What, then, of trust?

Eastward, up the avenue, the clash of battle rose. After a few moments Iko could see that a sudden press of Hengan defenders was pushing the Kanese regulars back. Hallens had also been studying the fray, and she stepped out, offering Iko a wink. ‘Shall we—’

Something knocked the woman spinning and she staggered, peering down at her chest. Iko stared as well, horrified yet fascinated to see blood now spreading in a rich red bloom down the armour. Hallens fell to her knees. Iko and three other Sword-Dancers rushed out to drag her to the cover of a gatehouse.

She lay on her side, coughing up great mouthfuls of blood. The fletched butt of a crossbow bolt protruded from her back. She reached out to Sareh, kneeling before her, and strained to say something, but no words emerged. The effort seemed to take all her remaining strength and she sagged, her chest no longer heaving.

Sareh rose, still staring down. ‘They’ve killed her.’ She said it as if she couldn’t believe it.

‘The cowardly scum,’ Yuna breathed, too stunned for rage.

Iko could not take her eyes from the corpse. Hallens, dead? The best of them? How could this be?

‘We will exact such a blood price,’ Yuna snarled. She snapped her gaze to Iko. ‘And you? Still think they are worth any respect?’

Blinking, Iko looked to her, and saw that tears marked gleaming streaks down the woman’s face. She raised a hand to the grip of her whipsword, clenched it there, fierce. She had to force open her jaws to answer, ‘No. None.’

*

It was only Koroll’s incredible Tartheno-Thelomen might, combined with Ho’s own surprising display of strength, that allowed them to drag the chained Ryllandaras into his stone sarcophagus – that and the powerful pushing of Mara with her D’riss Warren. Silk and Smokey contributed little, it was true, other than to remain as additional hands should the beast break free.

Along the entire route the man-beast maddened them all with his constant panted chuckling and obvious mirth at their groaning and sweating to scrape him along. As they dragged him up and over the lip of the stone sarcophagus, Silk could contain his irritation no longer and he glared down at the bound beast, snapping: ‘And what do you find so funny about this internment?’

Ryllandaras shrugged his monstrous shoulders as best he could, wrapped in chain and pressed within the carved stone depression as he was. ‘I wish to thank you,’ he panted. ‘You, my enemies, deliver me to my love. Now she can come to me whenever she wishes. Many hours shall we while away in the dark.’

Silk flinched from the stone lip and it seemed to him that the beast’s new bout of laughter was directed solely at him. Ho began drawing on the hanging chain and the thick granite lid of the sarcophagus suspended above began creeping down.

The stones grated as they met and Silk thought to hear some final threat or curse from the beast, but instead all that came to him was a last murmured, ‘Fear only love, my little mage friend.’

Ho shook the chain, saying, ‘If this is released, counterweights will lift the lid.’

Koroll nodded. ‘Very good. For we are risking a feud.’

Silk eyed the half-giant. ‘A feud? Who would fight for this one?’

Koroll appeared surprised. ‘Why, his brothers, of course.’

Now Silk was surprised. ‘Brothers? Who—’ He cut the words off short as Ho threw up a hand for silence.

‘Listen!’

Silk cocked his head but heard nothing untoward echoing up the empty tunnels.

‘Fighting,’ Koroll rumbled.

‘They’re in the city,’ Ho breathed, astonished.

Mara’s usual sour glower deepened even further. ‘
What?
How?’

Smokey was staring up at the ceiling. ‘Never mind how. We must go – now.’

The four set off, raising their Warrens as they went. Silk, however, lingered. Swift movement – through streets or through his Warren – had never been his forte in any case. And he had further reason to hesitate. How had the Kanese known to attack now?

How indeed
.

He brushed a hand over the dusty top of the crudely carved granite and remembered the last words from that damned lad the Red Prince. One betrayal deserves another. The bastard. He may have handed Li Heng to the Kanese – and all for what? A fit of pique? Just to get even?

He brushed his hands free of the dust and sighed. Well . . . it was only the death of the heir to the Grisian throne, after all. While in their charge.

He turned to go to join the fray, but paused as there came from within the great block of solid granite the definite tones of low panted laughter.

The mocking laugh followed him all the way up the tunnel.

*

Dorin stood on the roof of one of the towers that dotted the comparatively thin wall of the Palace Circle. It was long past midnight, coming on towards the first of the predawn light. He was facing south, where the fighting had entered a heightened pitch now that the city mages had finally thrown their weight into the battle.

He wondered what had taken them so long.

The streets below were heaving in what could only be described as plain chaotic panic. Never in living memory had any enemy penetrated the walls of Heng, and now its citizens were choking the streets. Half were determined to flee the various gates of the ring walls, while the other half were just as determined to squeeze their way in. The Hengan militia and reserves could only look in frustration at gates jammed open by wagons, carts, and a solid press of human flesh. The streets were equally impassable as hordes rushed from gate to gate.

Like a fire in an anthill, Dorin imagined.

For the first time in many nights he felt relatively at ease. The Nightblades, he knew, were now quite busy elsewhere and he could relax. As for the fate of the city, a Hengan or a Kanese administration, it mattered not one whit to him.

The salmon and orange glow of the predawn gathered in the east while the deep purple of the night retreated to the west, and Dorin saw that he was not alone. Another solitary figure stood on a roof a little way off. He, or she, also appeared to be studying the battle. Curious, but wary, Dorin made his way towards this other watcher.