Forging the Sword (The Farsala Trilogy) (23 page)

It was the acrobats who managed the best performance, though, giving the rest of Kavi’s people an excuse to be lingering in the shelter of Mazad’s tall, thick wall.

“Out of the way, you … you broomy bastard!” the girl who carried the rug was shouting. “We’ve got to get to our purchaser before an arrow hits this and wrecks two months of work!”

“But you haven’t paid me,” the acrobat with the broom whined. “I’ve been sweeping your path for half a dozen blocks. You’re owing me at least two tin bits—a whole foal if you weren’t so Flaming tight!”

The crowd around them divided their attention between the quarrel inside and the battle outside, just as they should. If they looked a bit nervous, well, that was to be expected. The Hrum had assaulted the walls often enough that no one was panicking over it anymore, but no one was easy with it either. Especially since the governor was now, presumably, a prisoner in the Hrum camp.

Yes, their reactions were fine. But they might have been doing a ribbon dance or holding an orgy for all the attention the guardsmen on the wall paid them. The guardsmen were pushing over Hrum scaling ladders in a kind of reverse tug-of-war conducted with sticks instead of rope. Though it seemed to Kavi that the Hrum weren’t trying quite as hard as they might to hold their ladders in position, and that the men on the wall were as much engaged in shooting surreptitious glances at one another as they were in pushing the ladders down.

“What will they do,” Soraya asked suddenly, “about the Hrum’s ladders when they’re fight—”

A clash of swords sounded from the gate tower. The thick stone muffled it, but the ring of steel on steel was as vivid as a war cry in this battle of ladders, poles, and arrows.

The guards on the wall shouted, and almost as if they’d agreed on the timing between them, turned and attacked each other.

“Now!” Kavi yelled.

The men in the street pulled out the short cudgels they’d concealed and ran for the nearest stair. The acrobats—their fake quarrel dropped in midsentence—unrolled the light rug they carried. The two brothers each took an end, while their sister grabbed the short staff the rug had been wrapped around, stepped into the center, and crouched. As she leaped, her brothers snapped the rug tight, tossing her far higher than she could have risen on her own. They had chosen a place where no one was fighting, which was just as well, since she only caught the edge of the parapet with her free hand—or perhaps that was what she’d intended all along, for she swung one leg over the edge and rolled onto the walk with an ease that seemed miraculous to Kavi.

Her arrival was the signal for the water carrier, who dropped his bucket, pulled out his cudgel, and started cracking backs, elbows, shoulders, any part of a traitor that came within his reach.

The brothers were already unwinding ropes from their waists
and attaching grappling hooks when the girl spun toward the nearest of Nehar’s men and swung her staff at the back of his knees.

He shouted with pain and surprise as his legs collapsed; then a blow from the flat of his opponent’s sword tumbled him off the platform and down to the street. He cried out again when he hit the cobbles—he’d probably broken some bones.

Kavi suppressed a flinch, trying to harden his heart. If the man broke an ankle or two, it would be easier for those who had remained below to disarm and bind him. It was to be a battle that took place here, not a massacre—Kavi’d had a hand in one of those already, and he hadn’t cared for it.

The girl whose father had died in that massacre frowned at Nibbis, who was lifting her large kettle off the cart.

“Should we help her? They’ve barred the tower door.”

“She doesn’t need our help,” said Kavi. “Do you have any idea how much that kettle weighs?”

His point was proved as Nibbis pulled the kettle back and then swung it at the door, just where the latch would be holding it on the other side. She might be old and stout, but she’d been handling heavy kettles most of her life. The tower door burst open. As the thick, hot soup splashed over the steps, Nibbis dropped the large kettle, picked up the small one, and darted into the tower, ladle at ready. A scream sounded within and Kavi winced, imagining a ladle of hot soup striking one of Nehar’s guardsmen in the face, in the
eyes. Like the rest of Kavi’s fighters, Nibbis had been introduced to all of Siddas’ men who would be fighting in this area—Kavi hoped she had a good memory for faces.

The screams also told him that some of the portcullis’ defenders were still fighting. Not that he’d needed to be told, for the portcullis was still down—not just a barrier, but a reinforcement for the outer gates if the Hrum did bring a ram.

Two guardsmen, the only two Siddas had spared him, raced into the tower after the soup seller. As Siddas had explained, inside the tower there wouldn’t be room for any more. But all of Siddas’ men were armed with the new watersteel blades, and even if there were only two, they were the best swordsmen Siddas had.

Kavi’s grin died as the water carrier cried out and toppled from the parapet. The acrobats, moving like the team they were, managed to catch him and break his fall. The man was unconscious as they lowered him to the cobbles, blood flowing from a sword stroke that had opened his shoulder to the bone.

The two brothers handed him over to the people Kavi had dubbed his “ground team”—he’d made sure there were healers among them. Then the acrobats tossed up their ropes; they were climbing to join their sister on the wall almost before the grappling hooks had set.

Several of Nehar’s men saw them coming and cried a warning, but they were too busy with their own fights to intervene. There
was nothing Kavi could do to aid the fighters, but he might be able to help the healers somehow. He was moving off the steps when Soraya’s fingers dug into his shoulder.

“Ladders!” she cried.

Kavi looked up as two more Hrum scaling ladders thudded onto the ramparts to join the one she had seen. He shouted his own warning, but the guardsmen were already aware. One of them, next to one of the ladders, bellowed in anger and determination and launched a furious blow, not at Nehar’s henchman, but at the man’s sword.

Kavi, frozen despite the urgency of the moment, watched the watersteel descend. He could feel the ringing clash as the two swords met, not only in his ears, but vibrating through his skull, his bones. The shattering of the traitor’s sword felt as if it were echoed in his own flesh.

He had time to marvel—as Nehar’s guardsman fell from the wall, his wrist shattered along with his blade—at the strange shilshadu gift old Maok had opened for him.

But not much time. The soldier who had broken his opponent’s sword snatched up a pole and knocked down one ladder, and the two acrobats saw to another, but a Hrum soldier threw himself over the top of the third and vaulted onto the wall. His own watersteel blade carved patterns in the air before him—defending the ladder so his comrades might climb.

The men on the wall, Siddas’ guardsmen and Kavi’s civilians,
surged toward him, and the Hrum struggled to beat them back. But Kavi’s attention was suddenly captured by a sight so horrifying that the battle on the wall was forgotten: a tiny twitch of movement in the great iron portcullis behind the gate. It quivered again, then jerked and started to rise.

“On the portcullis!” Kavi yelled, running across the street to leap onto the grid. It sank as he added the weight of his own body to that of the iron, then rose again, carrying him with it. “On the portcullis, men!” he cried again. “We need weight!”

He suspected there was only one man inside the tower cranking the winch, which was supposed to be a two-man job. But that winch was designed to lift an amount of iron that made Kavi’s weight irrelevant, and the man on the crank was desperate. The grate beneath him lifted a foot, and then another.

Three of his ground team, big, muscular men, leaped onto the portcullis. It fell back to the ground, almost jolting Kavi’s right hand loose, though his left held firm. Then the portcullis shuddered and started to rise again, but more of Kavi’s folk were coming now, and he climbed higher up the grid to make room for them.

Craning his neck, he saw the lady, still standing on the steps, her teeth clenched in her lower lip with the desire to help, somehow, anyhow—but knowing that with her light weight she’d just be using up space better given to a heavier man, like those who were now climbing aboard.

The wooden gate beyond the portcullis shook, banging into Kavi’s toes. The Hrum on the other side were getting impatient, but without a ram they’d have trouble breaking through the wooden doors; with the portcullis reinforcing them, they had no chance. As long as the portcullis stayed down … But it wasn’t moving now, not even a quiver. Kavi saw some of his men, his ground team, going into the tower, helping out blood-spattered men in the black and green tabards of Mazad’s guard.

Nibbis came out, her bright blouse and skirt stained with blood from several cuts. Kaluud, who was limping, had hold of her arm—though who was supporting whom was open to debate. If Kaluud had abandoned his post, then the fight for the winch was over.

Kavi climbed down from the grate, his hands aching with the sudden relaxation of his grip.

Despite the blood, the pain, and his horror at the injuries his own folk and even his enemies had sustained, he felt a fierce pride at how well they’d fought. If the deghans hadn’t forbidden it, his folk could have ruled and defended themselves. Always! He wasn’t wrong.

But looking at the lady Soraya’s strained face, holding to her post because it was the sensible thing to do, and at Kaluud, helping an old peasant woman into the hands of the healer before seeking attention for the bloody gash on his thigh, Kavi knew he hadn’t been right, either.

He walked forward on shaking legs, praising the men he passed for their effort, for their courage. He took some consolation from the grins they gave him and in the knowledge that the tower door was barred, braced, and guarded. The Hrum were gone from the wall now, and the handful of traitors who still fought wouldn’t be opening that gate, not today. It was his people who had made that possible, and they knew it too.

But Kavi also knew that if the battle for the gate had ended, the battle for Mazad had just begun.

S
HE HAD TO GET HIGHER
in order to see. The peddler had done a magnificent job of rallying his people, and they had won the gate. Kaluud limped out of the tower, assisting the soup seller—still alive, both of them, however badly battered. Within the tower Soraya could see Markhan, evidently not so badly hurt, for he was giving orders to the men who remained, sending the enemy wounded out to the healer and securing those who had surrendered.

The fight on the walls was all but over too. The female acrobat sat on the walkway, rocking in pain, clutching a leg that even from her angle Soraya could tell was broken. If it healed badly, it might mean the end of the girl’s career, but if the Hrum won she could
lose far more—and the Hrum could still win. Especially with Substrategus Barmael in charge.

Standing idle while the peddler and his people fought for their city, Soraya found that though her eyes gave her the most information about the battle in front of her, it was her ears that told her what was happening in the battle farther down the wall. The sound of war was a demon hymn of cracks, thuds, shouts, and screams, blended by distance into a dull surf roar—but by now her ears were sufficiently accustomed that she could hear the change in pitch as word passed that the attempt on the gate had failed. The Hrum were fighting harder, no longer waiting for the gate to open so they could march in. But even as the Hrum turned their full attention to the fight that lay before them, something nagged at Soraya’s consciousness. This still didn’t sound like … like the desperate determination she’d have expected in an all-out assault. Yet Garren had to win today, so why …? Of course! They were waiting for the reinforcements that would join them at the walls as soon as Barmael realized that Nehar’s plan to open the gate had failed.

She had to see, Soraya realized abruptly. She had to see not only more of the walls and more of the battle—she had to see more of the sky.

The storm was nearly there; a small, soft winter rain, the kind she had learned how to flee. More important, the kind that everyone,
townsmen and Hrum alike, had learned to fight through with only mild irritation at being wet. But perhaps Soraya could change that—if she had the courage.

The doors of the corn chandler’s house were open as the townsfolk carried in the wounded. All the homes and businesses near the wall were accustomed to sheltering and caring for the injured after a battle—the owners often doing the nursing themselves until a healer could come. This time, along with the guard, the townsfolk would be caring for some of their own.

Soraya bit her lip, winced, and deduced that she had bitten it before without even being aware of it. If these peasants could fight so hard for Farsala after their deghan governor had betrayed them, how could Soraya do less?