Ширли Мерфи - The Shattered Stone [calibre]

‘There,” Elodia said, pointing. “Lying on the ground by his mother . . .”

Bless Eresu, the woman was not holding him. “Wait for me!” Zephy put Toca’s small hand firmly into Elodia’s and was gone.

She came up behind the slight, kneeling figure of Tra. Thorzen, clapped a hand over the baby’s mouth, snatched him away, and ran—headlong into utter confusion, dark horsemen pounding toward her, the worship line broken and people running, women screaming, the clash of sword on sword, the fire flaring up behind. Zephy ran toward Elodia, grappling with the strong, struggling baby. He smelled of wet pants. She saw Elodia’s terrified face, grabbed Toca’s other hand, and they plunged away, half dragging the running little boy. Three huge Kubalese horses loomed before them, they swerved, there was a cry of pain and terror behind them.

The baby was fighting to get away. Perhaps his fear was magnified by Zephy’s own. Toca was pulled off his feet, she tried to scoop him up and nearly fell. They plunged into the housegardens where the attack had not yet come. The cries behind them were terrible.

They stumbled among tangles of vetchpea in their frantic flight, blundered into mawzee, terrified at the noise they made, but pushing frantically toward the north and the upper housegardens—they must get past them, to Anchorstar. Then a platoon of Kubalese horses filled the night before them, they turned and fled in panic. Had they been seen? Zephy pulled the Children into the Husbandman’s cow pens, but there were men there, soldiers. She dragged Toca and Elodia out, the baby heavy as lead in her aching arms. Where could they go? They must get past the upper housegardens, they must get to the north and Anchorstar; but the fighting was there now, trampling the gardens, and there was fighting in the village streets to their left. Frantically she pulled Elodia back in the direction they had come . . .

They ran, panting, toward the plum grove.

In the darkness of the grove she could not tell what might be waiting; but the grove was silent, no horses plunged, no voices shouted. She found the boulder at last, wrenched it free, and shoved the children through as a dark shape moved between the trees. “Hide,” she hissed. “There’s nothing to fear in the tunnel. Don’t come out, not for anything. I’ll come back for you.” She shoved the boulder back and ran. Could she lead whatever it was away from there? She dodged and nearly fell, could hear hooves behind her now. The air in her lungs was like fire. She swerved down the main street and into a group of fleeing women, then spun into the Candler’s open doorway, and stood gasping for breath. A horse pounded hard behind her, lurched past. She stood shaking uncontrollably. There was shouting and commotion ahead of her, screams. Then she watched as women were herded back down the street by a mounted Kubalese soldier.

Before she could flee again, a group of soldiers wheeled their horses into the street and began to jerk the swords from the doors and whack at the shutters with them, the horses trampling the little bowls of grain that had been set out for the Horses of Eresu. She watched as the shutters were wrenched off the windows and flung down, and pieces of furniture, clothing and pans and tools, were pulled out and trampled. She saw the weaver’s loom smashed, into sticks. She could smell honeyrot where a keg had been broken open, and she heard laughter as the soldiers sucked up the liquor. She heard a soft noise behind her, turned to run, and a hand was clamped over her chest and an arm encircled her. She was held tight. Then her captor lunged and fell, pulling her down beside him.

She was lying in wetness, in blood.

It was a Kubalese soldier. He stared up at her unseeing. Her only instinct was to crawl away from him. She pulled his tunic back and went sick at the sight of the wound then she freed herself and rose, to slip through the open doorway. The room smelled of wax. She tripped over a chair then at last found the back entry, and pushed it open to slip out into the narrow alley then along it in the shadows. She could hear women screaming again, and a sharp crack. She moved quietly toward the plum grove.

She had gone several blocks, was nearly at the edge of the housegardens when she came around the last row of houses and up against a Kubalese soldier standing silent in the shadows. She had no chance to escape. She struggled and he hit her hard so she saw flashing lights and blackness. He pulled her across the square between milling horses and men, past screaming women and a group of Burgdeeth men tied together—she sought for Shanner but could not see him. She fought and kicked and the soldier hit her again. She could taste blood. She was shoved into a group of women, cried out blindly for Mama, then was prodded with a sword as they were herded, stumbling, toward the Set.

At the Temple they were forced at sword point to spit on it, then were prodded through the gate of the Set, toward the prison.

*

Through the prison bars, Zephy could see the moonlit dome of the Temple. She was in the cell where Thorn had been kept. Women were huddled against each other, staring blankly. Some were bleeding, and a few had skirts blackened from fire as if they had tried to run through the flaming field. The smell of burned cloth mixed with the smell of filth. A woman began to weep, and someone began to whisper the Prayers of Contrition. They could still hear screams from the square.

Then Zephy saw, over the top of the Temple, the angry red sweep of fire on the mountain and knew without question that the Kubalese were burning Dunoon.

FOURTEEN

Dunoon was burning. The fire leaped high against the night as the Kubalese soldiers spurred their horses in a circle around the flaming huts.

While the main bulk of the Kubalese army had swept through Burgdeeth herding the populace like chickens, a small, select cadre had cut out fast up the mountain to enter sleeping Dunoon and, from ambush, lay fire to the thatched rooftops and pen the huts in a cordon to prevent escape. They narrowed and closed this circle until the Kubalese soldiers rode bridle to crupper, cheering the leaping flames.

But they saw no man run from the burning huts, heard no scream. When at last the flames died, the Kubalese soldiers dismounted, their weapons ready, to stamp into the huts to kill those left living or drag them out for their sport, to tear apart the furnishings and to loot, if there was anything worth the taking.

But there was no man, no child or woman there; the huts were empty, their contents smoldering untended.

Had Dunoon’s goatherds, at the first sound of hoofbeats in the dark, run away in fear? Or were the men of Dunoon hidden among the black peaks, laughing down even now at the Kubalese? Seething with fury, the Kubalese band spread out and up to search in the dark among the crags and shadows.

But on that rough terrain in the darkness, the Kubalese horses could only stumble and grow confused; they were struck from unlikely places, they leaped away in terror at strange sounds and thrusts, unseating their riders who, heavy in their war leathers, lashed out clumsily at nothing. The Kubalese soldiers fell and could find nothing but boulders with their flailing swords.

And the men of Dunoon advanced, quick and sure in the darkness, knowing their own land, attacking without sound, one here In the shelter of an outcropping, one to slip a Kubalese from his mount as silently as a breath. Thorn slaughtered three, and another; a quick knife to the loins, to the heart, a fallen body. The huts no longer flamed, were smoldering now, and the moons were cloud-covered.

When Thorn paused in the fighting to pull his sword free of a Kubalese body, he saw, down the mountain, that the flames had died in Burgdeeth’s field. If Burgdeeth had been taken this night, were the Children of Ynell safely away? He saw Zephy’s face in a quick, painful flash, then he plunged deeper into battle.