The City (11 page)

‘Wasting your time,’ the other man told him, looking around as if eager to be away.

‘Is the Hall of Blue Light in there?’ Gil asked, pointing to the cavern.

Elija nodded.

‘Do you live in there?’

Elija looked at Amita again. He wanted to trust these men, but he had wanted to trust the reivers too. Amita said nothing. For once she gave him no lead. He nodded doubtfully, unsure what they wanted him to say.

Gil glanced at his friend again, then asked, ‘Do you know your way through the sewers?’

Elija was suddenly distracted by the smell of roasting meat, greasy succulence wafting to them on the salt sea breeze. His nose twitched and his stomach cramped. Would these men feed them if he gave them the right answer?

‘We call them the Halls,’ he volunteered, trying to give himself time to think.

Gil nodded. ‘Do you know how to find your way through the Halls, Elija?’

He seemed eager for an answer and now the other man, Mason, was watching with interest.

‘Yes,’ he told them.

That seemed to be right, for Gil smiled and asked, ‘And do you know the way to the palace?’

‘Yes,’ Elija said more confidently, although he had no idea what a palace was.

‘Are you hungry, both of you?’ Gil held out his hand, and after a moment Elija took it and slowly stood. He looked around. Now his eyes had adjusted he could see beyond the rocks to a sandy beach where two boats had been drawn up. There were other dark-skinned men, and there was a campfire from where the savoury smells were drifting. Gil shouted to the men and one of them lifted a hand in acknowledgement. The words were strange and Elija did not understand them.

Turning to Mason, Gil said, in the City tongue, ‘This might be just what we need. Children would know their way through the sewers better than any adult.’

Mason nodded. ‘Saroyan should have thought of that. Looking for Hall-walkers was her idea, after all.’

Gil frowned. ‘Don’t mention her name, even here,’ he warned. Then he added, ‘And we could trust them better than’ – he nodded towards the opening to the caves – ‘those scum.’

He gazed down at Amita, who still sat on the rocks watching them suspiciously. ‘Are you Elija’s sister?’

‘Yes,’ she said promptly.

He helped her up, then asked them both, ‘Would you like to go aboard a great ship?’

First the children were fed by the friendly men on the beach, then they were taken on a rowboat to the ship which, in time, took them far away. And it was not until a lot later that Elija realized it was not a City ship, but one of the enemy’s.

INDARO SWAYED TO
avoid a sword thrust, then with a grunt brought her blade down two-handed on the enemy’s neck. Bone cracked like old wood. She dragged the weapon clear in time to parry a slashing cut from the right. A thrown lance bounced off the edge of her shield, missing her face by a hair’s breadth. The blow unbalanced her. She twisted and her sword lunged to the right, disembowelling the attacker, who fell screaming. She threw up her shield to block a murderous cut from the left, then her blade slashed high, braining a warrior without a helm.

Beside her Doon leaped on the back of a dead man and with swift cuts slashed the throats of two attackers. She paused for a moment and grinned at Indaro before stepping back down.

Indaro moved back from the soldier writhing in agony at her feet and pierced his heart with her sword.

She took the moment to glance around and feel the rhythm of the battle. The City’s warriors had been moving forward steadily throughout the morning, pace by pace pushing back the enemy attack. The sun’s warmth was creeping under the blood-red armour at her neck. They had been fighting since dawn and it was nearly noon. And they were still strong. As she paused two comrades ran past her, heading towards the enemy, plunging shouting into the melee.

Ahead of them an enemy soldier shook himself free and charged
towards them. Doon sang out her battle cry, a shrill scream which made enemies’ bones shiver in their flesh, and ran at the man. She ducked beneath a wild sweep and slashed her sword through his knee. Three more enemy warriors ran towards them. Indaro hurdled a fallen man and raced to meet them. She blocked the lunge of the first, nearly decapitating him with a reverse cut. The second warrior’s sword sliced into Indaro’s side, the third aimed a blow at her face. It was blocked by an upraised sword, and Doon smashed the soldier from his feet.

She turned to Indaro, worry on her face. ‘How bad is it?’

Indaro shrugged. ‘Flesh wound.’ She had no idea how bad it was. The wound was numb, but she felt blood trickling down her hip under the leather kilt. Or perhaps it was sweat.

Looking round her, she stepped across a body and, wincing as she bent, picked up a discarded Blueskin shield. She hefted it and dropped the old cracked one. She settled the new shield on her left arm, protecting her injured side. She wondered how many shields she had got through that morning. Maybe six, she thought, or seven. The Blues’ were the best.

To her right a soldier in red armour staggered, dazed by a sword blow. Indaro turned to help, but the enemy swordsman hacked into the soldier’s neck. Blood sprayed and the Blueskin turned to Indaro, scowling. There was bright blood in his blond beard.

Indaro attacked. The enemy parried, and Indaro barely avoided a murderous riposte which sliced her leather jerkin. This is a skilled swordsman, she thought, gathering her strength. The Blue came at her again with blistering speed and she found herself battling for her life. She parried and blocked with desperation, and was forced back step by step. The man was fighting fluidly. Looking into his calm face, she recognized that he was toying with her; he could kill her in a heartbeat.

Stepping back, her foot hit a body in the dust. She was unbalanced and the Blue sent a lightning thrust at her heart. She swayed gracelessly and fell to one knee. She swung her shield up. The enemy stood over her. She saw eyes watching her assessingly.

Then the trumpet screamed, ordering the enemy retreat. The swordsman paused, then backed away. He and his fellows were retreating in good order, protecting their wounded. From the ground Indaro watched him go, her shield still up. Then she dragged herself
to her feet, suddenly overcome with weariness, and stood dumbly waiting for orders. In moments the word came, echoing along the ragged ranks, ‘Back to the earthwork.’

She looked around for Doon, her servant and comrade, and saw her helping an injured Wildcat. Then, glancing often at the retreating Blueskin army, she returned slowly to the earthwork they had left at dawn that morning. She looked right and left. On every side all she could see was grey dust, corpses and blood. No plants left standing, no trees, no hills or landmarks. She had probably fought over this few hundred paces of land a dozen times. There was nothing to distinguish it from all the other battlegrounds. Each time she felt the need to make some mark, to show where brave men and women had fallen, a gift of lifeblood for the City. She understood why the ancients had built stone cairns to commemorate the places of battle. She smiled ruefully to herself. This grey dusty plain would be littered with cairns, each marking a daily engagement in a battle that had lasted half a year. She remembered fighting over this plain in winter, arms and legs encased in wool, both armies hampered by the need to avoid frostbite. Now it was summer and the sweat was pouring off her. Soon it would be so hot that soldiers would die in their hundreds from thirst and heatstroke.

‘Indaro!’

She looked round and saw she had wandered away from her company. An officer was trotting over to her.

‘Are you wounded?’ he asked.

She remembered the injury to her side and struggled to free her armour. She pulled aside the jerkin. The officer peered short-sightedly at the flesh wound. ‘Lucky,’ he said. ‘Get it stitched.’

He pointed her towards the field hospital, but as soon as he turned his back she sat down in the dust. The wound was bleeding, but not much, and she had no wish to join the badly injured, whose groans and screams echoed across the plain as the surgeons went about their grisly work.

Time passed as she sat there, then Doon was squatting down beside her, handing her a water jug. ‘You all right?’

‘I’ll get stitched when the rush is over.’ Indaro gulped down half the water then lay on her back in the dust and sighed. ‘Tired,’ she explained.

She felt Doon ease the sword from her hand. It was welded to the
skin, sticky with blood. She heard the sword slide into its sheath. Doon pulled off her body armour for her, and the freedom in her chest made Indaro greedily suck in air, bloodstained and fetid though it was. Doon gently lifted her head and placed something soft under it.

Then Indaro drifted off to sleep, and the distant cries of the wounded became the screams of seabirds as she dreamed of home.

Home was soft grey stone atop sheer grey cliffs, a place where the gulls wheeled and cried in the sunlight.

‘Stay away from the cliffs,’ they always told her. ‘Don’t go near the edge.’

But she was only three and she had no idea what cliffs were. She toddled up to the edge and watched the great white birds soaring in blue light. She flapped her arms to mimic them and jumped about on the grass. When she looked down she could not understand what she saw. There was no more land, nothing in front of her toes but white sparkles far away.

‘Daro, don’t move! Stay still, baby!’

Hearing her daddy’s voice she twisted round so fast she nearly fell over. Then rough arms grabbed her so hard it hurt and warm tears fell on her face.

Indaro shifted in her sleep and tried to roll over. The pain in her side woke her, and she turned to her back and stared at the darkening sky.

After that the little girl was confined to the grey house and its manicured gardens with their well-bred flowers and polite paths. When, years later, she walked up to the cliff edge again and looked down at the surf far below, the screams of the gulls calmed the pain in her heart. Her mother had died in the night. Her father sat at his desk staring unseeing at the wall. Indaro turned sixteen that day, and a new life was beginning.

The grey house was far above the City, facing the setting sun. For much of her young life Indaro heard no word of the City, and when she did she had no idea that she was part of it, she belonged to it.

But on her sixteenth birthday two soldiers came to the house and took her away, past the silent guards and watching servants, as her mother still lay in her death bed and her father sat helpless with grief. Indaro was taken to a training camp in the south where she stayed for twenty days. She was taught how to kill Blueskins and was put
in some dead warrior’s uniform and given an old sword and sent to the desolate plain of Araz to fight a battle. It was later known as the Retreat from Araz, a low point in the history of the City and a shame on those who survived it.

When she was ten and was given everything she wanted in the world, Indaro had been introduced to a fencing master, a thin elderly man with scars on his face, who taught her the subtle art of the blade. She had natural grace and balance, she was told by the courteous old man, and her mother smiled and her father nearly burst with pride to see how she quickly acquired the skills of a champion swordswoman.

These skills were of little use on the plain of Araz where, overwhelmed by one of the greatest armies the world had ever seen, the City’s forces were destroyed in two days of unspeakable carnage. Each moment was spent desperately hacking at flesh and metal and bone until it stopped moving. It was a battle with no survivors; at least, no one still alive admitted having been there. Indaro remembered those days only in brilliant bloodsoaked flashes. One of them was being hauled up the outside of the Wall of Victory in a flimsy willow basket. Nothing she had experienced in those two days of battle compared with the terror she felt in the last few moments; the terror that hope – unlooked-for hope after despair and hopelessness – would be snatched away in the final moment by an enemy missile. She was one of the last to be dragged up the high wall to safety. The rest of the willow baskets were destroyed by the enemy and the last hopeful survivors who, against all odds, made it to the base of the wall were butchered, trapped and helpless within a hand’s reach of rescue.

‘Time to get your wound stitched,’ Doon’s voice said. Indaro turned her head wearily and nodded. There was always a time after a battle when those who were going to die died, and those who were expected to live were treated and routine prayers of hope sent up for them. Then the surgeons could turn their tired attention to the less badly injured. Indaro stood and slowly made her way to the surgeons’ tents.

Half a year after the Retreat from Araz the City’s dishonour was partly relieved when, in an audacious advance at night and in the depth of winter, the legendary general Shuskara took back the land that had been lost, and destroyed an entire Blueskin army with just two thousand hand-picked soldiers. The Second Battle of Araz
established the City’s eastern defence at the river Kercheval, where it remained to this day.

The surgeon, a grey-haired woman with empty eyes, stitched the wound in Indaro’s side and bandaged it gently. Then she and Doon went to get some food.

At the crowded mess tent they took plates of fish, lentils and cornbread then walked over to an empty table. Around them men and women sat or slumped, too tired to talk, many too tired to eat. Indaro felt her bones sink into the wooden seat and she stared at the plate of food without enthusiasm.

Then a hard hand smacked her on the shoulder and, as she cursed the jolt of pain in her side, a rangy, tow-haired warrior sat down next to her, slinging a heaped plate in front of him. With him were three other members of their company, the Wildcats, laughing and talking as if, Indaro thought, they had all been to a wedding.

‘Still alive then, Indaro?’ Broglanh asked her, stuffing bread into his mouth and talking round it. ‘That Blue swordsman nearly had you.’ He swallowed. ‘Could have had you, if he’d wanted.’