Rise of a Hero (The Farsala Trilogy) (9 page)

“All right?” the guard asked.

“I . . . Yes, it’s fine,” said Jiaan firmly.

“Then I’ll leave you. You shouldn’t have to wait long,” he added kindly.

Jiaan heard the yard gate open and close. He hadn’t noticed that it creaked when they came in.

It was unexpectedly disconcerting, being sightless in a strange place. Even though Jiaan was certain Siddas would send only men who
would help him, he found himself thinking about how vulnerable he was. Anyone could take him out with a single blow from a club, and Jiaan wouldn’t even know it was coming. No doubt that was why he’d been left in this enclosed space, so no ill-intentioned bypasser could take advantage of him.

He thought about taking the blindfold off—or loosening it—but he knew that if he was caught doing so, the guides would take him no farther. So he kept his hands down, as the moments dragged by. He wondered what the Hrum were doing now. Had they reached the city yet?

He was almost ready to start groping for a bench to sit on—why hadn’t he noted their location before the guard blindfolded him?—when he heard the gate creak again. He stiffened in alarm, even as a man’s voice said softly, “Ready to go, sir?”

“Yes.” Jiaan knew he sounded curt, but it felt strange to talk to someone whose face he couldn’t see.

The man tucked Jiaan’s hand through his elbow, as though he was blind in truth. The cloth of his sleeve was warm, and had been coarse, but it
was now soft with wear and washing. He led Jiaan out through the gate, but instead of turning back toward the street, they headed farther down the alley. Jiaan tried to keep up with the man’s walking pace, but the stones were rougher than on the main streets. The man seemed to be leading him carefully, but Jiaan still stumbled several times.

Carefully, but confusingly. After a score of turns, Jiaan became certain the man was walking him in circles—yet another precaution Jiaan approved of, though he couldn’t help but try to remember their route, to attempt to determine their direction in the rare moments when he could feel the sun on his face and hands.

They walked for what felt like a very long time, but Jiaan guessed they were no more than a handful of streets from where they started when his guide came to a stop. “A moment, sir.”

Metal clashed softly, and stone grated on stone. The sound echoed, and Jiaan frowned. They hadn’t entered a building—he could feel the breeze—but he also sensed some sort of enclosure. How was that—

“Here’s the ladder, sir. Hold on here, and feel down with your foot.”

Both the uprights and rungs of the ladder were made of iron, cold and rough. The draft that blew up past him was filled with the sound and scent of water. Not an escape passage, an aqueduct like they had in Setesafon, doubtless bringing water from the Sistan River. But how could such a thing be kept secret from anyone? The townsfolk must know where the water came from. Setesafon had bragged of its sewer system, but Jiaan had heard only of Mazad’s deep wells.

He counted sixty steps down before his groping toe found a flat surface beneath it. He stepped onto the floor and moved to one side to let his guide descend, though he kept a good grip on the upright pole. He didn’t think this was just a ledge, surrounded by an even greater drop, but if he was wrong he didn’t want to find out the hard way. The sound of water wasn’t loud, but Jiaan had a feeling that a lot of it was running very near.

“Right then,” said his guide. “You can be letting go, sir; we’re down. But keep your right hand to the wall. It’s a bit narrow.”

A walkway, then, following the watercourse. At least here the guide couldn’t lead him in circles. They walked straight ahead, the slight uphill slope
yet another confirmation of Jiaan’s surmise. What was the point of the blindfold, when all this could be deduced so easily? Jiaan hoped the entrance was well hidden.

They traveled for what felt like a long distance before the guide stopped. “Last ladder. You’re almost there.” Was there a note of approval in his voice? Jiaan had almost become accustomed to not seeing his face.

The trip up the ladder was shorter, only forty-three rungs. This time the guide went first, telling Jiaan to wait when they reached the top. Jiaan heard the mechanism grate and squeal—louder than the first. The warm air that wafted down smelled of dust, and of the small, leafy trees that dotted the hills around Mazad.

Jiaan heard the guide start to climb again and needed no urging to follow him out, half crawling over a stone lip and onto the rocky, grassy soil. The sun was warm on his hair and shoulders, but when he reached for the blindfold, a hard hand gripped his wrist. “Not yet! Sir.”

“All right.” Jiaan took the guide’s arm again, but he wanted to be done with this—to see, djinn take them!

Perhaps it was only his impatience, but it seemed as if the guide led him in circles even longer this time, and the rocky, root-strewn ground was rough going. He heard no sounds of battle, not even in the distance, though the Hrum must have reached the city by now. Was that smoke he smelled? Finally the guide came to a halt.

“You’ve done well, sir. Put out your hands.”

The rustling leaves had already told Jiaan he faced a tree. He reached out and touched rough bark.

“Good. About two feet above your hands is a hollow. That’s where you can leave a message, if you’re wanting to contact Commander Siddas. Don’t—”

“Don’t wait to see who picks it up, I know.” Jiaan was beginning to be impatient with Siddas’ security precautions. On the other hand, he couldn’t have found his way back to the aqueduct hatch he’d just emerged from, nor could he have described the entrance to it in the city, except for a guess that it was somewhere near the north or west wall. Perhaps Siddas’ precautions weren’t as inadequate as they’d seemed.

“Right then.” Definite amusement in the man’s voice now. “I’ll ask you to wait for a slow count of thirty before you take off the blindfold. Then find the hollow, and make sure that you can find this place again. Once you’ve done that, go south. Your horses aren’t far.”

“Thank you,” said Jiaan.

“Thank you for behaving yourself. I’d have hated to . . . Well, never mind that now.”

Listening to the retreating footsteps, the back of Jiaan’s neck prickled. Siddas had let Hrum spies go unharmed; surely he wouldn’t have ordered Jiaan’s execution, even if he had seen too much. No, not his execution, but Jiaan would probably have been dragged back to the city, and held until the siege ended.

Jiaan abandoned the notion of cheating on the count, and even went to thirty-five before he yanked off the blindfold.

The sun was too bright; it made his eyes water. The tree before him was larger than most, but other than that it was perfectly ordinary. The leaves were a bit dusty. It looked wonderful.

Blinking, Jiaan gazed around and discovered that he was standing on a road, though the surface
was so rutted and rocky it was hardly smoother than the rough ground. To the left of the tree was a pile of rocks that looked like a crouching dog, from the right angle. From any other angle it looked like a pile of rocks, but Jiaan took the time to memorize them, and the tree, and the shape of the hills that cupped the road. He would need to be able to find this place again.

The hollow, when he finally stepped onto a gnarled root to climb up and look for it, was just a cavity formed where a branch had fallen away and the wood behind it rotted. Nothing to distinguish it.

Jiaan walked down the road to the south, making note of its twists and turns. After only a few hundred yards he found the horses, tied neatly to a tree that looked very like the message tree. Hadn’t Siddas said someone would be holding the horses?

Wait, there was someone—but he wasn’t holding the horses, he was lying on top of the low rise, looking south. He wore a subtly colored shirt that blended with the grass, but his straight, black hair contrasted sharply with the pale sky. Even before he turned, revealing his face, Jiaan’s heart had started to sink toward his boots. It was Fasal.

Jiaan set his teeth and began scrambling up the
slope. “What in the name of all djinn are you doing here? I told you to stay in the city!”

Fasal’s dark brows rose. “Markhan and Kaluud will be enough to keep an eye on the governor.”
And I don’t acknowledge your right to give me orders.
He didn’t say it aloud; he didn’t have to.

“I went to check on the horses last night,” Fasal went on. “When I found out that the Hrum would arrive today, I realized that if I stayed I’d be caught in the siege, so I left with the horses. One of the guardsmen told me I could meet you here. I’ve been watching the Hrum all morning.”

Jiaan reached the top of the slope and sank down beside him, acrimony forgotten. “What are they doing?”

But he could see that for himself. They were burning the suburbs.

“I don’t think they intended to do it, when they first arrived,” said Fasal.

Looking down, Jiaan realized he was in the hills north of the city, just where he’d expected to be. The view, looking over Mazad’s rooftops and the walls, to the flaming buildings in the south, was magnificent and terrible. The Hrum had clearly started the fire on the outskirts of the main
road, where Jiaan had ridden in . . . only yesterday? But the wind was blowing it west toward the river. The first few blocks of the southern suburbs were already a charred wasteland, with thin wisps of smoke rising from them. Looking down on the city from the other side, Jiaan could see the bright-clad townsfolk crowding the parapet, watching their homes and businesses burn.

“The first thing the Hrum did was to begin setting up camp,” Fasal went on. “In those fields by the river. But soon they sent a few score of men marching on up the road. When they came into arrow range, they stopped, all but one unarmed officer who went on, almost up to the gate—probably demanding surrender.”

“Evidently the governor didn’t oblige,” said Jiaan.

“He won’t surrender,” said Fasal. “Especially once the first few attacks have been beaten off, and he sees that it can be done.”

“What makes you certain he’ll hold on long enough to figure that out?” Jiaan demanded. “You should have stayed to help prop him up.”

“Kaluud and Markhan will do that. After all, the army they want to fight is here, not—”

“Skulking in the hills, like rabbits,” Jiaan finished. “You really think they can keep the governor’s nerve steady?”

“Without difficulty,” said Fasal. “After you left the dinner table, Markhan reminded the governor that all the high houses are gone. If Mazad holds for a year, there won’t be anyone for the Hrum to negotiate with, except Governor Nehar.”

The fire was already thrusting greedy fingers into the thick suburbs that surrounded the river. It might not cross the water, but the buildings between the river and the wall were clearly doomed.

“Markhan didn’t come right out and say it,” Fasal continued. “But Nehar could easily end up gahn—by Hrum decree, Arzhang take him.”

The djinn of treacherous ambition would have no trouble claiming that one. “You’re right,” said Jiaan. “If anything could put steel into Nehar’s soul, the hope of becoming gahn would do it.” And trust another deghan to figure that out. He really might become gahn, with Markhan and Kaluud as his right and left hands. It was a prospect so dismaying that Jiaan began to laugh—it was that, or cry. But Fasal was looking at him oddly. “Sorry.
Anyway, the governor refused to surrender—then what?”

“Well, I don’t know what he said,” Fasal went on, “but it was evidently . . . firm. The officer marched back to his men, all stiff spined, and a few moments later they sent a flight of arrows at the walls. I think it was mostly meant as a gesture, but the wind was with them and a few of the arrows made it. So our people fired back, and even with the wind against them the extra height told in their favor, so some of their arrows reached the Hrum as well. Those people can raise their shields into formation unbelievably fast.”

Jiaan laughed, with real humor this time.

“Aren’t you upset about this?” Fasal gestured to the burning town. “They set the fires as soon as their own people marched out. Weren’t you the one who was so concerned about saving peasants’ livelihoods?”

“The suburbs couldn’t have survived,” said Jiaan. “And it’s not like there’s anyone left there. So, far from being upset, I’m delighted. This is the first stupid thing I’ve seen the Hrum do.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid,” said Fasal. “I think seeing their homes burn will make these people
frightened, and hopeless, and they’ll be more likely to yield.”

“And I think it will make them angry,” said Jiaan, “and more likely to fight to the death. But what really matters is that once the fires have died, the ground around the walls will be clear of all but rubble. Any approaching force will be visible. If the Hrum hadn’t burned those buildings, Commander Siddas would have had to, but that wouldn’t have been a popular move, so he maneuvered the Hrum into making it for him. And if the Hrum commander is that foolish . . . Well, let’s just say that I’m feeling very good about Mazad. Especially if we can give them some support. But we’d better go. Eventually, even that commander is going to stop watching the bonfires and send out some patrols.”

Fasal followed him down the hill and mounted in thoughtful silence. He even took Markhan’s horse’s lead before Jiaan asked him to.

“Why didn’t you stay behind?” Jiaan inquired. Markhan and Kaluud stood a good chance of becoming the new gahn’s right and left hands; Fasal could have been the new gahn’s brain.

“I want to fight for Farsala,” said Fasal, “not Governor Nehar. Not even if he’s the only one left to become gahn.”

“That’s a horrible thought, isn’t it?”

Fasal stiffened. “The gahn is the gahn.”

Jiaan suppressed a sigh. “So why didn’t you stay? The fight for Farsala
is
the fight for Mazad.”

“I know,” said Fasal. “But they don’t need me, and you . . . the army does.”

And you need all the help you can get.
At least he hadn’t said it aloud. Jiaan sighed.