Petrodor: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 2 (59 page)

Finally, she reached what she fancied was the last stretch of stairs—she had come down far enough and there was a lamp burning at the bottom. Had
a warning reached the guards at the bottom of the stairs? There was no way of telling, and no way to make her descent safer. The stairs were a straight line with no cover. If one had a crossbow and she were caught halfway down…well.

She put the cloth back in her pocket, shifted her sword to her left hand and pulled a knife with her right. Then she began her descent as quietly as she could. Halfway down, she could see the rusted iron gates that led out to Dockside, dimly illuminated by the lamp above the guard's chamber. Just a few more steps and she'd be within knife range. Just a few…but then a man with a crossbow stepped from the guard's chamber, and Aisha knew the fates for frauds.

She hurled her knife anyhow, aiming high to make the distance—it hit the ceiling and bounced with a ringing crack…the crossbowman fired, and Aisha leapt, and felt her left leg kick away from under her. She fell crashing down the steps, somehow contriving to twist her small frame into a tight bundle and not decapitate herself on her own blade. The guard dropped his crossbow and pulled his sword. Aisha braced her arms and leg to stop her roll just short…her left leg screamed agony, her intended brace-stance collapsed and she barely managed to raise her blade in time to catch the full weight of the guard's blow. With no semblance of technique, it smashed her into the wall. Her head hit the stone, knocking her insensible, but her hands were moving of their own accord, her left hand snatching the second knife from her belt as she spun sideways to stab the man backhanded through the shoulder.

He screamed, and Aisha saw through blurred eyes a second guard in the guard room, his crossbow levelled at her chest. She sprawled forward, grabbing the wounded first guard, keeping him between her and the crossbow. The first guard swung around, trying to grab her. Aisha swung with him, ripping her sword across his leg. He screamed again, falling, Aisha catching his weight, or trying to, as her own leg gave way and her head spun, and she threw her sword in final desperation. It was a poor throw, and the second guard deflected it off his crossbow. He tried to re-aim, but Aisha tore the knife from the wounded man's shoulder, slicing her hand in the process, and threw that too. It was a worse throw, but the crossbowman ducked back behind his doorway.

The man at Aisha's feet grabbed her wounded leg and she screamed in agony, falling on top of the first abandoned crossbow. She grabbed it and swung arm-point first at the wounded man's head. It smashed into his helm, and his grip released. Aisha grabbed up his fallen sword, staggering to her feet, threw the crossbow at the emerging crossbowman who ducked back, and charged. Or tried to, as again her leg nearly folded.

The crossbowman fired in panic as she came through the guard chamber entrance, and Aisha felt a blaze of pain across her ribs, and a yank on her jacket that nearly turned her around. She swung in blind fury, but her hand was agony and her leg gave no balance, and he blocked the blow with his crossbow, then swung it at her head. Aisha tried to defend in the confined space, but her blade entangled with a wall, so she ducked instead and caught the full weight of the weapon on her shoulder, and a glancing blow off the head. She fell hard, face first on the stone and suddenly her mouth was bloody. The crossbowman was drawing his sword, backing around to the doorway for safety. Aisha rolled hard and slashed at his leg, and he leapt back, catching the tip across his shin.

He yelled, and hopped, and Aisha crawled for a desperate lunge, and stabbed one-handed through his thigh. He screamed and fell. Aisha was on him fast, as he collapsed on his back in the doorway, and she angled the blade across his throat. He got a hand on the blade's edge to try and stop its progress, but the steel was blunt on the reverse side and Aisha had a good, painless pressure with her left hand on the steel, while her right anchored the hilt. Blood flowed from the guardsman's hand. He sobbed and looked terrified. Humans were so dangerous when terrified. Aisha knew. She'd seen the ruins, the burned corpses, the strange fruit hanging from the courtyard tree. One shouldn't feel sorry for terrified humans. One couldn't.

She killed him, arterial blood spurting, drenching her face, an unspeakable horror on her victim's. Aisha left him dying on the floor, and crawled to reclaim her sword from where it had fallen alongside the guards’ bunks. Then she sat and considered her leg properly. There was a crossbow bolt straight through her calf, just missing the shinbone. The pain was horrible, and there was a lot of blood. Her hand was cut, her head swam and throbbed, and her shoulder felt like maybe something was broken, where the crossbow had hit her. The man she'd killed was still kicking. He wasn't dead yet. Death wasn't fair. Death never was.

Somehow she hauled herself up and staggered to the iron gate. The wounded man there had found her first knife, the one she'd thrown. He sat propped against the gate, the knife held hopelessly before him, his hand trembling. Clearly he had no idea how to throw it, nor was in any condition to do so. His leg was bleeding badly, and his right shoulder was bloody. She shouldn't leave him that knife, with its serrin steel edge. Nor the other one that she'd thrown at the dead man. But she'd forgotten that one, and taking this one off a second terrified, wounded man seemed too much effort. She had to get out.

“Move,” she said hoarsely. “Get away from the gate.” He moved, struggling,
trying to keep pressure on his bloody leg with one hand, while shuffling with the knife hand. Aisha lifted the gate's heavy bar with difficulty and slammed the bolts open. The gate opened soundlessly as she pulled, its hinges well oiled. She limped out into the thicket of redberry bushes that obscured the entrance. Above, the high yellow cliff of Sharptooth soared toward the grey sky. Opposite, beyond the bushes, dark walls loomed, windows barred and bricked up.

Aisha limped past the bushes, then collapsed on the narrow, paved lane between wall and cliff as her head spun and her balance failed. She rolled on her back, and found that the pavings were wet, and a light rain fell onto her face. The tug in her heart did not pull so strongly, now. Perhaps, she thought, if she lay here long enough, the rain would wash her back into the sea, where the currents would carry her all the way to Enora eventually. She wished it so, more than anything she'd ever wished in her life. In the distance, above the gentle patter of rain and the cry of a gull, she could hear the sounds of battle.

“We're coming over!” Rhillian yelled. “We're coming over, and you'll have to fight us if you want to stop us!” She stood atop a ladder at the rear wall of Palopy House, yelling at Patachi Vailor. Patachi Vailor stood likewise atop a ladder on his side, glaring at her between the tall metal spikes that lined the wall. Patachi Vailor was an older man, white-haired and bearded, and on those occasions Rhillian had met him previously, of gruff and taciturn demeanour. Now he glared, and his nostrils flared outrage, but there was fear in his eyes.

“You lead that mob into my house,” he shouted, “and my family will all die!” The air was thick with smoke, even as the rain tumbled down. Screams and yells were fainter, but only because the crackling roar of flames drowned them out.

“You swore allegiance to Patachi Maerler!” Rhillian shouted furiously. “You are Maerler's man, and I have allegiance to Maerler, and you will let me over or…”

“Or you'll what?” Vailor snarled. “I never swore any allegiance with Saalshen! I never swore to protect demon pagans and cripples with the blood of my sons! Saalshen's time is finished, and I'll not sacrifice my family on the altar of a lost cause!”

“You will regret this!” she hissed. “Do not sleep too soundly at night, Patachi Vailor, for Saalshen's arm is long and her footsteps silent!”

She slid back down the ladder before the patachi could reply, and raced toward the house. Palopy was aflame. The entire western side of the upper floor facing the cliff, now burned like a bonfire on a happy Sadisi. Smoke billowed from the lower floors as the ceilings began collapsing, and the flames spread. The rear garden was filled with Palopy staff—humans all, men and women comforting each other, tending the wounded, covering their faces against the filthy smoke. Some dunked cloth in the courtyard fountain amidst the grass and flower gardens, and wrapped those about their lower faces.

Rhillian ran up a garden path and looked at the wall of Family Gelodi to the east. The spiked wall rose tall, and there was even less hope of escape that way for Gelodi were sworn to Steiner. Ahead, near what was left of the front garden, she could see serrin with bows and oil-shot pouches taken from the ballista, now abandoned upstairs as the smoke became intolerable indoors. Arele and Calia had brought the oil and leather pouches downstairs, where
talmaad
threw them by hand, to keep the fire burning where the wall had been breached. Artillery fire sailed in at regular intervals, not as accurate as the ballista, but accurate enough. The front of Palopy House was burning in places too, and the gardens were a flaming wreck. Most fire had been trained on the front wall, which had collapsed in two places, but the flames were so intense, none of the screaming mob had made it through. Some had managed to scale the wall with ladders or rope, and been shot. The others waited, chanting, for the fires to die.

There was not enough oil left to keep the fire at the gate burning for long. Arele had divided the oil and ammunition into two, one to the east side, and one to the west. Calia had been on the west side when an artillery shot had hit nearby, killing her and wounding two others horribly. Humans might have found someone to put them out of their misery, but serrin were very bad at that sort of thing. Master Deani had smothered their screams with cloths soaked in solution to make them sleep, and they'd been dragged to the rear garden and left to die. Nothing more could be done. Calia's oil had burned too, when the artillery hit, and that fireball had set much of the west wall on fire. Calia had had the fortune to be standing close. For her, it was quick.

Kiel approached Rhillian, strangely unhurried as stones cracked and bounced behind him—there were no archers atop Palopy's roof now, and the mob filled the street beyond, hurling rocks and firing the occasional arrow through the breach. Serrin fired back, and killed many, but the window of attack was small and the mob was vast. Some serrin had taken to firing almost straight up, to let the arrows fall sharply on the other side of the wall. It had some effect, but there was a wind blowing now, and rain falling, and a vertical arrow was no sure chance of a kill.

“Patachi Vailor?” Kiel asked her. His grey eyes were as calm and cool as ever. Rhillian shook her head. “Shall we attack him?”

“He has a hundred men and many archers,” said Rhillian. “We'll be killed coming over the wall.”

“We'll be killed here anyway.”

“Make a suggestion,” Rhillian said darkly, “or do something useful.”

“We could leave the humans here,” said Kiel. “Serrin alone and unburdened might stand a better chance. If we moved stealthily across the Gelodi wall instead of the Vailor, they might not be expecting us, and then—”

“You're joking!” said Rhillian.

“I'm not. You asked for a suggestion.”

“Make another!”

“Rhillian, I merely suggest that—” An artillery shot erupted with a thud and rush of flame at the front of the house. Rhillian shielded her sensitive eyes. Kiel gestured back over his shoulder, with perhaps the first trace of real frustration that Rhillian had ever seen from him. “They're going to kill us, Rhillian. If I must die for Saalshen then I die gladly, but you in particular are important, and—”

“And our staff are not?” There was a desperation building in her. Had she caused this? Had she been wrong and Errollyn right? How could she be responsible for something so horrible? All her poor human friends with their families’ long decades of loyal service to Saalshen…why had she not thought of them in her plans to save Saalshen's presence in Petrodor? What were a few buildings besides their lives? “Kiel, I don't understand you! How can you not feel for them?”

“I feel for them very much, just as much as you do. But they are not—”

“I don't believe you,” Rhillian said coldly. “You speak like the priests, you say one thing and mean entirely another, and expect me not to know the difference. Is Errollyn the one truly corrupted by the humans, Kiel, or are you?”

Kiel just gazed at her, lips faintly pursed, as if considering a troublesome puzzle set for him by his scholarly uman. Neither her words, nor the flames and screams, nor the prospect of imminent death seemed to trouble him.

Terel arrived at their side. “An issue?” he asked, without preamble. The right arm of his jacket was burned. His angular face was tight, lips pressed thin as he loomed over them.

“Kiel wishes to leave our staff and run,” Rhillian told him.

Terel did not look surprised. “You go, Kiel,” he said, with mock kindness. “You leave the matters of substance to the adults.”
Shland'eth rhmara
, he said. “Matters of substance.” The context was philosophical,
tel as'rhmara
, “a strand on the web of truth.” There were few things that mattered more to
serrin minds. It was the fabric of the universe itself, truth made incarnate, through the acts of thinking people. Terel excluded Kiel from it all, as an adult might patronise a silly, irrelevant child.