Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1 (49 page)

Wu waved him off and returned to his sketching. ‘I believe you were going . . . yes?’

Dorin picked up another drawing.

Wu tried to snatch the slip away but Dorin evaded his hand. This sketch was framed in a rectangular outline and featured a dense dark tangled mass of writhing shapes. Dorin turned it this way and that. ‘I don’t think much of your execution.’

Wu darted out from behind the table to yank the parchment from his fingers. He pinned it to a timber next to dozens of other such sketches.

‘You sure you don’t want to come?’ Dorin asked.

Wu sat heavily, frowned at the page before him. ‘Quite.’

‘Suit yourself.’

Dorin left to search for Rheena. He found her in the main common room where many of the lads and lasses ate and slept. He waved her over. ‘Keep everyone locked down. This has nothing to do with us.’

‘Yes. I’ve called everyone in already.’

‘Good.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m going to keep an eye on things.’

She tightened her lips in disapproval, but nodded. ‘Careful. And Wu?’

‘His head’s up his arse. You’ll have to organize a defence here in case troopers come looking for trouble.’

‘Looks like someone will have to.’

‘Thank you.’ He dashed from the cellar as she was saying something else, and didn’t quite catch it.

*

Silk came across Hengan troops defending a hastily raised barricade of overturned wagons and heaped warehouse bales and wooden crates thrown up across a major access to the riverfront. From the fallen and the wounded being treated it was obvious that they had seen some action, but there was no fighting at the moment. Silk called for the officer in charge and was joined by a young sergeant-at-arms.

‘Why are you not attacking?’ he demanded.

The young officer flinched at his tone. ‘They are far too many, sir.’

‘Then why aren’t
they
attacking?’

‘Don’t know, sir.’

Silk climbed the barricade, squinted into the heavy layered fog. ‘What’s going on? What could you see?’

‘They’ve formed shield walls defending the shore, sir.’

Defending? Holding the river? Why do that when the streets lay open before them? He fought to penetrate the hanging mists but couldn’t be certain of anything. There was one way to illuminate the situation, but doing so would open him up to retaliation from whoever was behind this astonishing magery. He could get squashed for his trouble. Still, whoever was manipulating these forces on such a scale . . . he or she must have their hands more than full. It might be worth the risk. He readied his Warren. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ he told the sergeant. ‘Tell me what you see . . .’

He raised his hands, summoned his energies, and sent a stabbing shaft of light streaming down and across the width of the river. He was too busy concentrating on his manipulation to study what the flash revealed. It lasted one instant and he immediately grabbed the sergeant’s arm and pulled him down with him. ‘What was there? What did you see?’

The young fellow was blinking in the dark. He started, hesitantly, ‘A series of defences assembled against major accesses. Like outposts. But the majority were on the move – ranks marching west past us.’

Past them? West? Deeper into the city? Why pass by unsecured sections? They could be cut off. It went against all military strategy that he knew of to expose one’s forces like this.

His thoughts went to the city centre. The governing quarters, the palace and the Inner Sanctum, and his breath fled from him. Gods of the city!
Unless one were making a throw for the seat itself
. Why waste the lives of hundreds, nay thousands, in messy uncertain street-fighting when in one clean stroke one could take control of the city entire?

He staggered from the sergeant, horrified by the vision. They meant to take the palace. They mean to take . . . his gaze shot to the tall single spire of the one tower rising into the night sky above the sanctum.
Shalmanat!

He turned and ran without any explanation, any word.

‘Sir!’ the sergeant called after him. ‘What do we do?
Sir!
’

The clash of battle echoing through the streets as Silk approached the Inner Round both reassured and dismayed him. It reassured him that he was right in his guess, yet he wished he hadn’t been. He did not even slow as he passed through fortified Hengan positions to enter a contested main thoroughfare that led to the nearest gate, which was held by Kanese infantry.

Even as he ran, crossbow bolts hissing about him, he raised his Warren and cast ahead of himself without restraint, without thought of what was to come. The infantrymen and women massed in the gate shouted their pain as they dropped weapons and pulled at their armour, falling and writhing. Smoke wafted up carrying with it the stink of burned flesh.

He ran over them where they lay crying in agony, the smoke rising from them. In such an extravagant manner, flaying all about without any holding back or husbanding of his energies, he reached the palace grounds. Here city elites still held the main structure of the Inner Temple. These ranks let him through and he jogged for the throne room.

He found Shalmanat cloistered within, together with Ho. He halted, panting, exhausted and drained. ‘Good,’ he managed, hardly able to speak. ‘I caught you before you withdrew. We can escort you from the city, of course.’

The Protectress wore a long cloak of thick wool that she drew up about herself at his words. ‘I’m not going.’

Silk looked to Ho for support; the man shrugged his helplessness. He offered, ‘We cannot hope to hold them all off . . .’

‘How long until dawn?’ she demanded.

‘Perhaps an hour.’

She nodded at this. ‘Until then. One hour. Can you do that?’

Ho and Silk shared a glance. ‘We will try,’ Ho answered.

Her nod turned fierce. ‘Do that. Give me the dawn, gentlemen.’ She backed away, waving them off. Ho bowed, and when Silk would not move he took his arm and drew him on.

‘Where is she going?’ Silk demanded.

‘I believe she is withdrawing to the tower.’

Silk was appalled. ‘There’s no retreat from there!’

Ho would not release his arm. ‘Then she will surrender – if she must. Now come with me. We have a great deal of work ahead of us.’ Silk allowed himself to be led off. Not that he had any choice as Ho was immensely strong, but he did not resist. ‘What does she mean, the dawn? What does she want with the dawn?’

The shaggy, unkempt fellow was grim. ‘I’m afraid we’ll find out. For now, we will hold, yes?’

Silk yanked his arm. ‘Yes. You can count on me.’

Ho released him. His thick lips drew back from his blunt teeth in a humourless smile. ‘We shall see.’

*

Fascinated, Dorin traced the route of the invading Kanese infantry along the Idryn’s course, past river gates and on to the city centre itself. From rooftops he watched while hastily thrown up barricades and strongpoints were overrun by an irresistible Kanese advance to the Inner Round. It was as if the Idryn itself had overflowed its banks, he reflected.

Here, resistance hardened. Elites with nowhere to retreat held out in narrow gates and chokepoints. Yet the overall current could not be held back. The Hengans were already outnumbered by the Kanese and more were flowing in from both the east and the west.

The end, it appeared to Dorin, could not be disputed.

And in consequence, it lost its interest for him. No need to linger here. What he wondered now was who was in charge of the operation. The slim possibility that Chulalorn himself might be down there somewhere directing the campaign was intriguing. That was worth investigating. And so he waited, and watched, and eventually he spotted a runner, a messenger, and shadowed the young woman as she jogged off along the river’s length.

He lost sight of her a few times in the thick curling scarves of fog – burning off now with the coming dawn – until her trail led him to the river gate of the Inner Round. Here she joined a mass of Kan Elites, all picketed and readied, guarding a position in the shadowed murk of the gate.

Chulalorn himself, he was sure.

And he became certain when he glimpsed the bright shimmer of the fine mail coats of the Sword-Dancers, in double ranks, encircling the centre.

His target, come into the open. Yet now would be the worst time, with everyone alert and readied. The very opposite of the proper moment, in point of fact. And so he sat back in the shelter of a chimney on a tall building overlooking the Idryn, content to watch, and evaluate.

Shortly afterwards the crackle of grit on the rooftop alerted him that he was not alone. Knives readied, he peered round the brick chimney to see a lone figure standing on the roof’s edge, also studying the secured position on the Idryn. He relaxed, lowering his weapons; it was that strange foreign female mage.

‘Greetings,’ she called without even turning.

He straightened and approached. ‘We meet again.’

‘Indeed. It would appear we are creatures of habit.’

‘Why are you interested?’

‘This . . .’ she gestured airily to the night, ‘manifestation interests me.’

‘I know its author.’

She turned to face him directly, one brow arched, and again he was struck by her alien appearance: not obviously inhuman, but not quite right in the proportions of the eyes, cheekbones and chin either. ‘In truth? Now you interest me. Who, or what?’

‘A Jag. Named Juage.’

‘Ah. He is here. We have met . . . long ago. Strange that he should lend himself to such an . . . errand.’

‘He said he was compelled. That the Kanese kings have a hold over him.’

‘Indeed.’ Now her face hardened, the jaw tightening and the lips compressing into nonexistence.

‘He is a friend?’

‘Not as such. He is Jaghut. They are a strange kind, I admit. Alien to you, but admirable – in their own manner – to me. Their current . . . well,
situation
concerns me. It is something I have sworn to look into.’

‘What will you do?’

‘Nothing. As yet. But time is running out.’

Dorin eyed her, wary. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that dawn is coming and these Kanese have yet to subdue the Protrectress.’

‘And so?’

Her mouth drew down once more. ‘There may be a confrontation that would be dangerous for everyone.’

Dorin was shaken by the strange woman’s certainty, but there was little he could do at the moment. ‘Well, thank you for the warning.’

The mage turned to the east and raised her chin to peer past the forest of roofs that lay all about them. ‘We shall see soon enough.’

*

Silk used his forearm to push up the sword thrusting at him and drew the soldier’s belt-knife with his other hand to thrust it straight up under the man’s chin. He staggered backwards as the man fell. Ten of the Hengan palace elites remained standing with him in the corridor. A new wave of Kan infantry rounded the corridor to crash shields with the elites. Silk reached for one shield and took hold; with direct touch he easily heated the bronze to glowing and the fellow howled, falling away as he pawed at the burning piece. A javelin thrust at him but, as he had experienced only a few times before, with his Warren elevated to its fever pitch everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. He jerked his head aside and thrust in past the weapon to take the fellow in the eye. This brought him to the front and now he was forced to bat aside several short sword thrusts, turning one to break a wrist, slashing a forearm, and leaving the dagger in a last one’s throat.

The rush ended with this last Kanese to fall; the elites were panting, seeing to minor slashes and cuts. Silk fell back as well, hands on knees, trying to catch his breath. ‘That’s all for now,’ he managed.

‘We’ll hold,’ a female elite said. ‘What with you taking half of them.’

A mass of approaching footsteps announced another rush of Kanese.

He signalled for a withdrawal to the next inner set of doors.

Crossbow quarrels whisked past them and the Hengan elites ducked, holding their wide shields behind them. Silk merely backed away, dodging the missiles – as before, with his Warren sizzling about him he could see their paths the way a shaft of light crosses a darkened room. Yet he was past spent now, weaving, his grasp upon Thyr slipping. He ducked behind the palace guards to lean against a wall, his head spinning in exhaustion.

The bellowing and laughter of Koroll in full battle fury echoed up the corridor from another wing of the palace. Beneath that growled the constant low roar of Smokey’s Telas flames and a kiln heat emanated from the main audience hall on the left.

Silk nodded to the surviving men and women of the guard to hold these doors. Only one last set remained behind: those that led to the throne room itself, their last retreat. He was worried that the Kanese may yet get behind them and cut them off, and wanted to check on all the other accesses and corridors. Yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave these guards. Earlier this winter he knew he would have, without a moment’s thought or misgiving, but something had changed. Men and women had died for him. They’d given up their lives. He’d seen it up close, felt their blood on him. And it had changed him.

He could admit that now. A damned late time in one’s life to come to any sort of empathy with others, but there it was. Some never came to it at all.

He nodded encouragement to the female guard, who was clutching her leg where she’d been stabbed through. ‘No need for much marching now anyway,’ he told her with a wink.

She smiled through her pain and gestured up the hall. ‘You needn’t stay, sir.’

Sir
. First time anyone in the palace had ever called him sir.

‘We promised the Protectress the dawn, and we’ll give it to her.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘They’re advancing as a solid column behind shields,’ the forward guard warned everyone.

Silk roused himself, pushing from the wall. ‘One more time . . . I will try to hit the shields again.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The elites readied themselves in ranks, two across. Silk, at the rear, reached for his Warren once more and found it frighteningly distant. In attempting to raise it he fell forward on to the rear of the soldiers ahead of him and they supported him, alarmed. Their mouths moved but he heard nothing above the roaring in his ears as he pushed himself further and harder than he ever had before. Finally, almost beyond conscious volition, he grasped it and lashed out at the shields and armour of the column now pushing against the elites before him.