Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

"Publius? What is it? What's wrong?"

"Shh! Listen! What's that noise?"

"What noise?"

I sat up, my face pointed towards the open window-shutters. "That noise! Listen!"

It came again, a man's voice, raised in a shout of panic, faint and far off, smothered by distance, but now taken up and repeated by another, nearer, and then another and several more. I leaped from the bed and ran to the window, leaning out, straining my ears, and heard the dreaded word, "Fire!"

"Fire," I said, over my shoulder to Luceiia. "They're raising the alarm. There's a fire." I could see nothing, could smell no smoke, but my guts churned in apprehension. "Quick! Light a lamp." I began scurrying to find my clothes in the darkness, dragging them on somehow and running from the room before Luceiia was able to find the tinder-box.

I emerged from the main door to find the courtyard already filled with running bodies and saw a horseman thunder into the yard and head straight for me. He saw me and leaped down from his horse's back, almost falling at my feet. I grabbed him and held him erect.

"What, man? What is it? Where's the fire?"

"The granaries," he gulped, drawing a deep breath. "The granaries, Commander, up on the hill! Four of them are in flames."

"Four of them? Damnation! Where were the guards? Are they all blind up there?"

One granary alight was a tragedy; four meant catastrophe. We would be hard-pressed to save enough food for the coming winter. I gripped him firmly by the shoulder and seized his horse's bridle in my other hand.

"I'm taking your horse. Give me a leg up, quickly."

He hoisted me up cleanly, and I fought for a second to control the animal, which resented having someone new leap onto its back so soon after shedding one rider. Finally I brought it under restraint and swung it around in the direction I wanted to go.

"Summon every man in the Colony," I yelled at the rider. "Every soldier, every colonist. Get them up to the hilltop as quickly as they can run. Who's fighting the fire?"

"Only the soldiers who were on duty up there. There's no one else nearby."

"Damn and blast! I'm going up there now. Get the others on the road as quickly as you can. Tell them it's going to be a hungry winter if they're slow." I put my heels to the horse, and as soon as we were on the pathway that rounded the south-west end of the villa I saw the baleful, smoky glare of the fire on the hilltop ahead of me.

The hours that followed are hazy in my memory, so intense was the frenzy with which we fought the blaze. It burned with an ugly, sullen fury, refusing to be mastered, its roots smouldering deep within the piled banks of dried grain. I remember clearly, however, that I found signs, early on in the struggle, that the burning piles had been soaked with oil before being set alight; around the edges of the conflagrations, there were scatterings of grain, kicked away from the flames by the first discoverers of the catastrophe, and they were glued into clumps, held together by the viscous, flammable stuff poured over them by the incendiary madman who had done this.

That knowledge, that there was a madman among us, startled me into realizing that there might well be no men at all left down at the villa, and that this madman, whoever he was, would almost certainly not be up here at the fire.

The man working beside me was Erasmus Sita, a young giant and a decurion in our colonial forces. Sita was huge and strong, a full head taller than me with a mighty breadth of shoulders. I tugged him by the arm and motioned him to step away with me, back from the noise of the fire and the smoke. He leaned close to hear what I had to say. I ordered him to select ten of the youngest, strongest soldiers he could find and take them at the double, forced-march pace, back down to the villa as quickly as he could. He was to find Luceiia and make sure that she was in no danger, and then he and his people were to remain at the villa, standing guard and at the ready for anything that might develop. I saw the puzzlement and curiosity in his eyes and I waved towards the fire.

"This was deliberate, Sita. There were four separate fires here, now threatening to grow into one big one. Somebody set this place alight on purpose. I don't know who and I don't know why, but I don't want to be caught unawares if the whoreson has other plans for tonight. So get down to the villa quickly, but take the longer route down, not the main path; that way you'll avoid the people coming up. If they see you going back, it could cause confusion. But get there quickly. You understand?" He left at a loping run and I saw him begin to pick out his men.

I remember then that I left him to it and turned my attention to organizing a bucket-chain from the unfinished cisterns in the fort, and that there were not enough men available to make it work. And I remember the arrival of the first newcomers, a trickle that grew to a flood as the flames rose higher and the wind sprang up again to whirl blazing sparks towards the four minor granaries that were still untouched by the fire.

The granaries themselves were no more than stout wooden boxes, bins pitched at the seams and raised on stilts to protect their contents from the damp earth, and covered with heavy, sloping roofs. They burned disgustingly well. I don't know when I realized we could not win, but I think the awareness came only slowly to me. Dense, awful smoke swirled everywhere, roiling obscenely upwards. It filtered everywhere through the piles of grain, ruining the food forever, even before the wooden side panels burned through, allowing the grain to gush out onto the ground. In a short time, all our vigilance was dedicated to protecting the four silos that remained.

I staggered off at one time, away from the searing heat, in search of some clear air, my insides raw and burned from inhaling the smoke-laden air close to the fire. I found a wooden saw-horse to lean against, and someone handed me a jar of water. God! I remember still how good it tasted. I drank deeply and then sat there for a while, looking at the activity going on around me. I was exhausted, but then, everyone else was, too, by that time.

Too tired to move, I stared at the men around me and wondered if it was one of them who had set the fire in the first place. I knew them all, and I had to accept the possibility, but I found it hard to believe that any of them could deliberately wreak such malicious damage. And yet someone most definitely had. Then came a crashing roar mixed with screams of agony as one of the bins collapsed in flaming ruin, sending burning bursts of sparks in every direction and catching at least one fire-fighter unaware. I plunged back into the smoke and lost track of time again.

There came a time, at last, when there was no more to be done. The fire was as close to being under control as it would ever be. There was no hope of extinguishing it completely; the scattered piles of grain would smoulder for days, unless it rained again. I delegated a crew of soldiers to police the area and guard against new outbreaks, promising them they would be relieved in four hours. In the meantime, dawn was breaking and everybody else began to go home in search of sleep. I climbed up into a wagon that was crowded with weary men, all of them crusted in soot and grime, the whiteness of their eyes and teeth startling against the blackness of their faces. My nostrils were clogged with soot and the stink of burning. I do not know who was with me in the wagon, or whose back it was I leaned against. Before the cart reached the bottom of the hill I was asleep. I think everyone else was, too.

The man I was leaning my back against woke me by leaving the cart, but I shifted my position and dozed off again immediately, and then somebody was shaking my shoulder and calling my name. I opened my eyes and looked at my tormentor. His face was black and strange-looking, and as soon as he caught my eye he gestured sideways with his head, saying nothing. Groaning, I pulled myself erect, saw that I was home and began to climb stiffly down from the cart. I reached the ground, looked up to thank the carter, and only then realized that everyone was staring over my head at something behind me. I turned, and my guts churned as I saw a body spread-eagled face down in the dim half light of dawn, at the bottom of the steps to the main doorway of the house. The door lay open, and there was no sound to be heard. My tiredness vanished instantly, but my legs were unwilling to move from where I stood staring, and I felt fear and panic washing over me.