James Barclay - Once walked with Gods

But it was the best they were able to provide beyond a forced march to Taanepol, which, at the pace of the Ynissul civilians, would have taken at least six days. The attrition rate among those they’d saved would have been appalling. It might be dangerous here for a while but at least it was manageable.

Katyett looked back at the column and closed her eyes at the numbers she saw. She sent TaiGethen into the camp to beat the grass and scare off whatever they could before bringing them all in and making them find their own spots. TaiGethen then patrolled through them while others searched every building, trying to identify where the civilians could go.

Olmaat was set down among the civilians and was immediately fussed over by Ynissul iads, who produced cloth and salve from seemingly nowhere. Katyett saw a smile on his face that touched his eyes for the first time since he’d left the Gardaryn with Jarinn and Lorius.

‘Graf, Merrat, Pakiir, Faleen.’ The four TaiGethen trotted over. ‘We need to work fast. We’re lucky because the rain isn’t coming back for an hour or two. Not until dawn has broken anyway. I need you to find every willing iad and ula you can and divide them, one group to each spare Tai. By spare I mean all those not engaged protecting the rest.

‘I need working parties to clear vegetation from the dormitories that are viable and, if you’re feeling brave, from the bivouac roof. If we can make that safe, we can billet a lot of people there.

‘I want others to start collecting food. Yniss knows we need Beeth to provide us a bounty beyond imagining. So berries, roots, herbs. Not just for food, medicine too. Let’s not be naive. We’re here with people who will get bitten, scratched, stung and infested. We’ll need pots of the critical stuff. Tea tree, vismia, verbena and pareira as a minimum.

‘I want others to get down to the river. We’ve got spears with us so we can attach vines and fish. I need traps for meat. Tual save me, I don’t need to tell you. As much as you can as often as you can. Pass your knowledge as you need to. We have to keep the camp smoke-and flame-free, so teach steaming and how to build a rock oven, clay stoves, anything. Get them involved in their own survival. Let them sit and fester and they’ll get desperate and difficult. Inspire and survive, as Takaar would have said. We’re only three miles from the Ultan. We don’t need wanderers and we don’t need attention.

‘Anything else?’

Merrat chuckled. ‘No, we understand. And that just leaves you to do the talk, right?’

‘Which talk?’

Merrat spread her hands. ‘Rainforest survival, naturally. Just a pity you haven’t got all your skins, shells and paintings, isn’t it?’

Katyett thinned her lips and glowered at Merrat, though there was a little warmth of humour in her gut.

‘And you, Merrat, can take your party to do the most important job in the camp.’

Merrat’s mirth dissipated. ‘I don’t want to ask, do I?’

Katyett shook her head. ‘No, but I am ordering you to ask just the same.’

Merrat laughed. ‘My Arch Katyett, leader of the TaiGethen. Which is the most important job in the camp?’

‘Latrines,’ said Katyett. ‘Latrines for three thousand elves unused to trail food and exposure to heat and rain. And you’ll be close enough to hear my talk too. How lucky you are. Sorry, Merrat, I didn’t catch that.’

‘I said Yniss blesses me with the tasks he sets.’

‘He does, my Tai. He really does.’ Pelyn hadn’t persuaded them to go upstairs. In the end it didn’t matter. If there was one thing for which Sildaan could be relied on, it was punctuality. The skies had remained clear for her too. The sun was banishing shadows from the top of the canopy behind them. It rose to sparkle against the tall spire of the Gardaryn.

Down on the approaches to the harbour, in the quarters of the city the Cefans and Orrans had cornered for their own in a loose alliance, or so Tulan had grudgingly revealed, it didn’t matter that the skies were clear. It rained anyway. Teardrops of pure, beautiful and terrifying dark yellow. They fell dense and heavy like Gyal’s grief, trailing smoke.

Behind them, orbs of brown and green traced up high into the sky, crashing down on buildings or disappearing from sight, their impacts told by the rumbles and echoes of detonation. The rain set alight everything it touched. Quickly, the whole of Harbour Side and Salt were ablaze. Thick smoke fled into the heavens.

Pelyn had stood and walked to the window to get a closer look. The three of them had belatedly moved onto a balcony, their unfettered view all the more terrifying. Pelyn thought she could hear screams and the clash of weapons. It was hard to be sure. But she knew what she felt.

Yniss had turned from them. Tual had retreated to his fastness in the forest. Shorth’s arms would have to be wide indeed to embrace all the souls heading his way. Men and magic were rampaging through the elven first city. She watched their castings rise and fall. She felt heat from the fire and cold from the ice.

She felt a terror so deep it reached through her and back into history. It chilled the souls of the ancients in the halls of the dead. It rooted her where she stood and meant she cared little that her cloak was hanging open or that her erstwhile guards were standing at her shoulders. Not as captors, as Al-Arynaar behind their Arch.

Pelyn stared while the echoes of light danced on the backs of her eyes. She stood as the skies began to darken for the first rains of the day and the streets drummed already with the sound of the footsteps of elves fleeing they knew not where. And then she turned from the raw power battering her streets and stared straight into Tulan’s stupefied eyes.

‘So do you still think you should serve me up to be raped by every Tuali ula in Ysundeneth, or are you going to go and find me some clothes and a sword?’ Katyett and the TaiGethen had been drawn to the north end of the camp some time before dawn as if in response to a growing threat. The nose for danger was, Takaar said, the single biggest difference between a Tai warrior and any other elf. Katyett disagreed, preferring to think of her speed and reactions as her greatest assets.

Whoever was right, there was no doubting the feeling that they all shared. It was going to be a beautiful morning in one respect only. And while the skies lightened to a glorious blue sluggishly filling with cloud, the scent on the air was bitter and cloying. Calaius smelled wrong.

The more curious of the Ynissul refugees had begun to join them, looking towards the coast, over the Ultan’s walls and down towards Ysundeneth, the highest spires of which were just about visible on a clear morning such as this. Katyett looked to her left. The iad she had spoken to on the trail yesterday was standing between her and Merrat, his partner behind her. She was called Onelle, and if Katyett could save one elf in all this, it would be her.

‘I don’t think you’ll want to see this,’ she said.

‘What is it?’ asked Onelle.

‘Awful power unleashed indiscriminately,’ said Katyett, feeling a sense of helplessness with which she was unfamiliar.

‘Tualis grasping power,’ said Onelle.

Katyett shook her head. ‘You’re looking in the wrong place for your enemy. This is the hand of man under the eye of the cascarg Ynissul. Rogue Tualis are being opportunistic in their atrocities and the grasping of influence.’

Onelle wanted to say more but a bloom of green light, tinged brown, grew above the city, casting lurid shadows across the ocean. Myriad flashes of deep yellow light appeared in the sky, falling like blossom. Deep-coloured flashes low to the ground, throwing spikes of light up the spires. Flames, yellow and hungry, ate at helpless timbers.