David Drake - Mistress of the Catacombs

Ilna glanced through the hole which slowly closed in back of her companions. On the other side was a city whose stones still dripped with the mud of a swamp.

A lizard covered with bony scutes waddled into view, shouldering massive walls into ruin whenever the way narrowed or twisted sharply. A black-robed woman turned but stumbled in exhaustion as she tried to flee.

The lizard’s long jaws slammed on the woman. It jerked its head upward, flinging the victim up to fall back into the waiting maw. Her right arm spun separately, severed by the first crushing impact. The opening winked completely shut.

“Now,” Ilna said, “we need to get out of…”

As she spoke, the world around her began to go dark. It was only as Ilna fell forward that she realized the dimness was in her eyes, not the sun searing down from above.

Tearing a hole in the cosmos hadn’t been easy, of course, even for Ilna os-Kenset. Her last thought before her mind shrank to a point and went black was, “ But it never matters what the task costs, so long as I do it… ”

“I want you both to stay well back, now,” Carus said to Tenoctris and Sharina as they entered the siege lines around Donelle together. “An archer on that gate tower can double the range he’d get on the flat.”

The Blood Eagles marched before and behind Carus and the two women; the section under Attaper immediately about them were mounted, as were the score of aides and couriers who followed closely. Tenoctris, who couldn’t very well have walked from the fleet encampment on her own feet, turned out to be an able rider.

That was a bit of a surprise in someone so devoted to scholarship, though Sharina knew it shouldn’t have been. Tenoctris’ father was a noble. He’d kept up his standards, though the horses may have eaten as well as the family on occasion.

The old wizard sniffed. “Precisely how will my death harm the Isles worse than yours, your highness?” she said. “And you’re planning to go right out under the walls!”

Behind the earthworks and mantlets, Lord Waldron and his officers waited to greet the prince and the returning army. The line of march stretched back to the fleet, even though Carus had left a strengthened garrison with the ships. Tenoctris had warned of danger out of the water, though she couldn’t be more precise despite her desperate efforts with an onyx scrying bowl.

“Well, I have to,” Carus muttered. “Anyway, there’s not much risk when the garrison sees Count Lerdoc’s army is with us. Mercenaries have to be willing to die, but that doesn’t mean they want to!”

“Yes,” Tenoctris said. “And I need to get to the Temple of Our Lady of the Moon whether it’s dangerous or not. The risk of a stray arrow isn’t nearly as serious as what will happen if we don’t hurry.”

The Blaise army had been slower to fall into marching order than the disciplined royal troops, so for the most part it followed the royal army. Count Lerdoc himself led the battalion which immediately followed the Blood Eagles in the order of march, however; his lion banner waved in the van. No one on the walls could miss the fact that the force investing Donelle was now twice the size of the royal army alone, nor that there was no chance of outside allies rescuing the city.

Sharina leaned closer to the old woman to speak without being overheard. “Tenoctris, are you feeling all right?” she asked. “You seem—”

“Snappish” was the word that suggested itself. The tendency was common in others, but Tenoctris was a model of gentle humility at most times.

“—worried,” Sharina finished. She’d also been raised to be tactful and pleasant.

Tenoctris laughed, suddenly her normal self again. “Dear, I’m quite terrified,” she said simply. “For some time I’ve been sure that these Children of the Mistress don’t understand the forces they’ve put in motion. Now that I’m sensing what it is behind them, using them like game counters, I’m…Well, whatever it is, it hasn’t the kingdom’s good at heart, and I don’t imagine that it’s thinking of humanity’s good either.”

Lord Waldron must have started shifting his artillery as soon as the courier informed him of the king’s plan. He’d placed in front of Donelle’s main gate all the catapults and ballistae he could move in the available time; the remainder of the heavy weapons were on the way also, hunching along the circuit of the walls on carts and sledges drawn by men as well as draft animals. The old noble knew he couldn’t prevent his monarch from exposing himself, but he intended to make the risk to an archer in Donelle obvious.

Sharina helped Tenoctris dismount behind the mantlets. Lord Waldron used his position as army commander to greet Carus alone. He didn’t try to force his way past the king’s guards, but none of his subordinates stepped forward with him.

“Your highness!” Waldron called between the shields of two Blood Eagles. “I’ve made what preparations I could, but I don’t think—”

“On the contrary, milord,” Carus said, tapping the guards unwillingly aside, “you’ve thought things through very well. But it’s still me who has to go out there.”

Taking off his helmet, he added, “They need to know who’s offering them their lives. Now, shift one of these mantlets so that I can get through.”

The pulleys which moved the city gate began to squeal. Both heavy leaves lurched open, hand’s breadth by hand’s breadth each time the men at the capstans took a step. Mercenaries tossed their shields from the gate towers and began to shout. It was a moment before they fell into unison so that Sharina could hear, “We surrender!”

“By the Lady!” Carus said. “It seems it’ll take even less to convince them than I’d thought!”

He shoved his way between mantlets which troops had just started to move. Sharina, slimmer and at least as quick, slipped through also before Attaper shouted, “Hey! Don’t let her—”

The dozen men coming out the city gate were mostly common soldiers, though a pair of officers in gilded breastplates followed at the end of the delegation. They didn’t carry shields or spears, and several had taken off their sword belts as well.

A burly soldier stepped ahead of his fellows to kneel before Carus and Sharina. “Your highness,” he said, his face close to the ground, “I’d say, ‘Give us terms,’ but I’ll tell you the truth—”

He looked up, his scarred face twisted in fear and misery.

“—the only thing we really care about is our lives. And if you execute us anyway, well, at least we’re out of that hellpit inside the walls!”

“What I planned to offer was to enroll you in the royal army if you’d surrender the city,” Carus said cheerfully. “You’ve already performed your part of the bargain, so you don’t need to worry about me keeping mine. But what is it you’re so determined to get away from?”

Squads of Blood Eagles were double-timing through the gap they’d torn in the siege works and taking position between the king and the mercenaries. Though they didn’t pick up the kneeling spokesman and hurl him back to a safe distance, Attaper and a junior officer planted their legs so close on either side of the man’s head that he looked as though he were crawling through a dense thicket.

“They’ve grabbed up a child,” the mercenary said. He hadn’t exactly relaxed, but he rose from prostrate to a kneeling position. “We figure they’re going to sacrifice her in their temple. It’s not like we’re a bunch of saints, but—”

“I don’t want any part of killing kids like a goose for a feast day,” said another soldier. His words were slurred because the same old wound that scarred his cheek had taken out the teeth on the left side of his jaw. “And I sure don’t want any part of whatever they plan to call up by killing kids!”