The Hollow Queen (31 page)

Kymel merely nodded. He sat atop his warhorse as he heard the orders pass up and down the travel line, closing his eyes at the vulgar commentary and the hideous undertone to the reactions the news engendered in the “second half of the rankings.”

“You take the far side of the thoroughfare,” Dantre said as the division began to split as ordered. “Approach the city from the east; I will take the western side of the thoroughfare. Levis and Skraw will lead the northern and southern attacks.”

Kymel swallowed. Both of the men named as division leaders were among the most repugnant of the enlisted soldiers.

There was no question in his mind what sort of damage would occur once the northern and southern gates were opened.

*   *   *

It took more than two hours before his division of the regiment was at the eastern gate.

From the distance they were maintaining, Kymel could see a few archers up on the inside wall, a pathetically small contingent that was spread far too thin for the defense of any walled city, especially the capital of Roland.

The sight saddened him immensely, knowing how weak the defense would be behind that wall.

He turned atop his warhorse to the soldiers behind him.

“Remember the rules of engagement,” he cautioned them seriously. “If Comfort Law is to be enacted, it will be undertaken at Dantre's orders
only
.”

A widespread snicker and low laughter answered him, as did the sarcastic voice of one of the men in his division.

“Oh, yes,
sir
, of course,
sir
. Wouldn't have it any other way.”

Kymel sat straighter in his saddle.

“Do you wish to come closer and repeat that to me, soldier?” he said in a deadly tone, one that he had heard his uncle employ on very rare occasions of misconduct.

The mutterings and amusement reduced to a somewhat quieter level.

“I thought not. Be careful, the rest of you—if a man's too much of a coward to stand by his own words when he is with his own regiment, imagine how quickly he will desert his comrades when in the fray.”

The mutterings fell to a sullen silence.

“The archers are positioned only on every third crenellation. Keep to the outside of their range.”

Kymel turned back to the gate, feeling the hatred boring into his back as he did.

Or not,
he thought as he took up the reins.

He signaled to the wagoneers whose dray horses were carrying the battering ram, one of the four that had been harvested and had its tip cased in metal the night before.

He could hear in the distance shouts from the wall; the archers had made note of their arrival.

By now, the entirety of the citadel knew that it was surrounded.

Kymel signaled to the brawny soldiers who would carry the battering ram.

“Set to,” he ordered, hearing the trumpet blast from the western gate.

He waited until he heard the other two trumpet calls, indicating that each of the other three divisions was set, then waved his arm at his own trumpeter.

A silvery blast rent the air.

“
Charge!”
Kymel shouted.

The soldiers bearing the battering ram stormed the enormous gate under a hail of arrow fire, while the archers with the Sorbold regiment returned fire. Kymel directed the advancement of the foot soldiers, watching detachedly as they assaulted the gates, some spinning to the ground, impaled with well-shot missiles, others returning short-range missile shots, toppling the occasional archer from the wall.

It's only a matter of time,
he thought as he watched the assault.
Skilled as their archers might be, our numbers will win out eventually. It's inevitable
.

And he was right.

*   *   *

The northern gate was the first to give way.

With a resounding trumpet signal, the gate beyond Kymel's sight tore open.

A wide chorus of gleeful screaming sounded at the northern quadrant of the wall. It was almost as if the initial opening was the bellwether; little more than a moment later, the eastern gate ripped open as well.

Kymel's division blasted in, screeching with orgiastic fury.

It was all he could do to keep ahead of them on his warhorse, galloping full out.

They rode and ran over the bodies of the fallen, their fellow soldiers and the enemy archers alike, pushing and charging through the splintered gate of what at one time Kymel knew to have been one of the most heavily defended cities on the continent.

He rode forward into the central streets that surrounded the basilica of Fire, his division immediately behind him, and the rest of the regiment riding and stampeding into view.

He pulled his warhorse to an abrupt stop and held up his hand for the rest of his division to do likewise.

Standing in the streets of the city was an enormous number of wild-eyed women, some with children sheltered behind them, but most alone, thousands of them, Kymel noted, perhaps ten, even fifteen thousand, spread across the city in a circle, staring at each directional point where the gates had been broken through.

Attired in common clothing, holding bread baskets and small looms, trays of fruit and baskets of laundry.

Caught in the midst of their daily chores and life.

From the back of his own division, a familiar voice began to chuckle.

It was a sound that made his blood run cold as it was picked up, almost immediately, by many others standing behind him, then by the other three divisions of the eleventh regiment behind their commanders.

The eleventh division of the Sorbold army, having just taken the citadel of Bethany almost without wielding a single weapon, began to laugh uproariously.

Across the city central square, Georgis Dantre held up his hand, accompanied by a stand-down call from his trumpeter.

The women of Bethany, abandoned by their men, it seemed, continued to stare at their captors in terror.

Georgis Dantre nudged his mount forward, his hand still aloft to hold back the troops from charging.

“Surrender,” he said kindly in the Orlandan tongue. “Put whatever you are holding down in the street before you, kneel where you stand, and put your hands behind your head. You will not die, and you will not be abused under the Comfort Law.”

The women, stunned, looked at each other in dismay.

They stood, frozen, for a long moment.

With evident impatience, Dantre signaled to them again.

“Kneel if you want to live,” he said, annoyance creeping into his voice.

Once again, the ranks of women looked at each other, then turned back to face their captors.

And began to kneel, putting their baskets and trays down into the streets before them.

“Hands behind your heads,” Dantre instructed as the voices of the men behind him were starting to rumble again.

Reluctantly, the women obeyed, their eyes glistening.

Kymel, fighting a wave of nausea, was moved to pity at the sight of their tears.

“Easier to see and judge the orbs when they's arms is up like that,” shouted an oaf in the ranks. “I see a few that look tasty.”

“Don't cry, darlin'—I don' want any salt on me bodkin when you're suckin' on it,” yelled another.

“Stay down like that; I'm gonna shove my broadhead up your arse!”

Over the rising laughter, a single flat voice could be heard.

“Don't be jealous, ladies—we're going to knob you
all
.”

A deafening chorus of hooting and gleeful screaming arose, filling the air of the city.

Georgis Dantre signaled angrily for silence. He rode forward slowly until he was almost to the center of the city square.

Then, it seemed as if in a dream to Kymel, the dark-haired woman at the front of the arc of the circle on the western side snatched the cloth from the top of her laundry basket, raised a crossbow that was lying beneath it, and fired a bolt into Dantre's forehead, neatly parting his hair.

The commander of the regiment fell to the cobblestones, his split head making a resounding crack as it impacted the street.

As the invading force stood for a moment in utter shock, from every basket and tray, out from behind every linen apron came weapon after weapon, mostly crossbows but also some throwing knives and longbows, which were fired seconds later in great sheets of arrows and bolts by women soldiers who had taken on an immediate battle formation that gave them ranks of height, each one behind or above another.

Another flight of arrows screamed through the air and stung into the eyes of the invading force.

Leveling the entire front line.

“Fall back!” Kymel shouted as the stunned invaders recovered their wits, swung their crossbows forward and fired, or charged the line furiously, raving in rage. It was of no use; the men, laughing the moment before, had regained their anger and turned it on the ranks of women they outnumbered more than four to one.

Their efforts were of no use, either.

The fifteen thousand defenders of Bethany had been part of the force that Anborn had observed before he went off with the men of Roland to fight along the Threshold of Death and set up to begin to break the occupation of Sepulvarta.

He had broken into raucous, full-bellied laughter a few moments after observing them training, noting their skill, delighted in his nephew's decision that had not been specifically communicated to him to enlist an equal, possibly greater-numbered cohort of female soldiers, as well trained and talented as their male counterparts, skilled in missile weapons, into the army of the Alliance.

And, by the look of what was coming out of their bread baskets and linen trays now, swords and cudgels as well.

They're not crying,
Kymel observed distantly, remembering the gleam in their eyes upon first being confronted by the occupation force.
They are furious, and rightly so
.

In the center of the southern division, a blond woman with a dowdy kerchief in her hair was standing at the fore now, a long whip of some sort in her left hand, drawing a sword with her right.

Her face, fair with skin like a rose petal, was set in grim determination as she stepped even farther forward into the line of fire, her white apron bib scarcely concealing a scale breastplate of gleaming armor.

She wound back and struck with her whip, a clean, terrifyingly long blow eliciting a snap that sounded like a crack of thunder. The whip encircled the neck of Skraw, who clutched his throat, dropping his crossbow as she dragged him off his horse and pulled him nearer to her.

She drew her sword from its scabbard; it roared forth with thick flames whispering up the blade.

Dear All-God
, Kymel thought.
The Lady Cymrian.

With the cleanest sword stroke he had ever seen, she sliced off Skraw's head and kicked it away from her as the neck began to spurt blood.

“We surrender!” shouted one of the women bawdily from within the ranks of the archers.

A roar of higher-pitched laughter went up from the center of the city.

Then the women charged, some with crossbows, others with short swords or knives; they engaged their invaders, fighting hand-to-hand in the street, some falling back, some falling, but holding their own.

From the ramparts above a new rain of arrows sailed down; Fhremus looked up to the raised ramparts to see a soldier he thought he recognized giving the commands.
Who is that?
he thought hazily. He racked his brain until a name came to the front of his head.

Knapp.
One of Anborn's men
.

Whom the Lord Marshal had obviously felt confident enough to leave behind.

He was musing about the irony when a crossbow bolt caught him in the throat.

The world spun in color interlaced with seconds of black as Kymel pitched sideways off his horse, falling to the ground with a resounding thump that he did not feel.

He looked up, the sky askew above him, to see a woman with steel-gray hair approaching him; he watched her boots as they came to a halt next to his eyes.

In the distance he heard a distinctive voice shout over the roar of the battle.

“Elsa! Don't—he hasn't moved since he came in here with them. Wait—”

The gray-haired woman looked down at him flatly, sizing him up. Then she crouched down next to his shoulder.

“You assaulted our gate, came into our city, our home,” she said. Her voice had a wobbling tone, as if the words were being spoken in a distant cave. “If for only that alone, your life is forfeit. My apologies.”

He could only hear, not see, the knife being drawn, felt it dragged cleanly across his neck, saw the life gushing out of him.

And, with the last of his energy, smiled a trembling smile.

How I wish I could have told you I respect you all,
he thought as his consciousness dissipated on the wind.
My only sadness is that I am dying without you knowing I was cheering for you.

*   *   *

Later that night, Knapp descended from the wall where he and the other archers atop the rampart, a combination of Anborn's experienced forces and some of the new recruits selected and trained by the Lord Cymrian, had been needlessly awaiting the arrival of support troops and reinforcements.

He came over to the Lady Cymrian, who, with dozens of other women charged with the cleanup duty of bodies and sorting the supplies stripped from them, was making her way systematically through weapons and arrows, bolts and armor.

“All is well, then?” he asked.

Rhapsody nodded, continuing to count.

“In due deference to the soldiers we lost, I don't believe that could have gone much better.”

“Agreed.” The Lady Cymrian finally seemed satisfied with her tally, and looked up into Knapp's face. “Quite a haul; they were well armed, even if they weren't well trained.”

“It's hard to say whether they were or not,” said Knapp, uncorking a flask and offering it to Rhapsody, who accepted gratefully and took a sip. “We had the element of utter surprise. It would not have come out so beneficially if we hadn't.”