Breath of Heaven, page 53
And the Haessari were everywhere.
When they’d come here the first time—he and Eraeth and Siobhaen—the Snake People had had patrols around the city, but they’d seen none of them on the streets or lurking in the buildings. Now, they had patrols on all of the major thoroughfares, had camps at intersections and open spaces that had once obviously been parks or markets. He’d approached one such camp earlier, discovered that it had been in use for months, probably since Colin and the others had first come here. Walter must have kept the Snake People away the first time, except for a token force, to better lure them into the trap he’d set at the Well. Eraeth had told him that the Haessari had searched for them after they’d fought Walter and the sukrael at the Source. Were they searching for them still?
No, he thought, as on the street he’d just vacated a patrol of ten of the Snake People marched past, six of them split into two groups that were scouring both sides of the thoroughfare, poking their weapons into the shadows, shining the lights of their torches into empty doorways and windows. The other four remained clustered in the center of the road, their eyes trained on the higher ground.
Colin flattened himself against the stone wall at his back and fought the urge to halt time and slip past them. They weren’t searching; they were protecting the Well. If they were searching, they’d be moving from building to building, leaving no nook or crevice in darkness, especially this close to the Well. He could practically taste the cold, silvery waters, could smell the thick richness of leaves and loam. The Source’s power pulsed up through the soles of his feet, through the stone at his back, suffusing him. His skin prickled, as if thousands of ants crawled across his flesh, and his bones shivered.
The patrol drew closer. The three nearest to Colin’s position rounded the corner and Colin drew in a breath and held it. One of the Haessari halted, nothing more than a shadow silhouetted by the torchlight of the group behind him. A reflection from the torches ran down the snake’s blade like orange blood. Colin caught the flicker of the creature’s tongue as it tasted the air.
The creature hissed softly and shifted, head lifting.
Gripping tightly to his staff with one hand, Colin began reaching out to seize time—
But one of the creatures in the middle of the street hissed harshly and the one threatening Colin’s position spun and responded. It glanced back, torchlight now reflecting off of its scaled hide, then shifted away, the entire group moving off toward the south.
Colin waited until they were out of range, then slipped up and over the dregs of rubble he’d hid behind. He paused, made certain the group hadn’t turned back and spotted him, then edged around the corner into the cross street. The horizon was brighter now, light spreading outwards across the land like spilled ink. He could pick out the tops of the shattered towers, could see the striations and etchings in the stone, the nearest like thousands upon thousands of stalks of woven grass, the one beyond rough like bark.
Before him the street ran parallel to an open area with a low wall surrounding it. Shadows pooled everywhere, but he darted across the street to the low wall, slipped over it, grit grinding into stone beneath his chest, and crouched down on its opposite side. Peaking up over its edge, he saw torchlight coming from two different directions.
He needed to reach the towers before they arrived.
Spinning, he raced toward the nearest—the grass tower—moving as silently and swiftly as he could. He was in the inner circle of buildings now. He knew the oval depression and the broken crystal hall that held the Source lay at the center of the towers; its blue-white light mimicked the sunrise, but from the north.
He reached the base of the grass tower, stumbling in the scattered rocks on the wide stairs that led up to its gaping entrance. The stones clattered down the steps and he winced, making a sudden detour into the tower’s doorway and the darkness there. He slammed his back against the wall just inside, gasping, then twisted to peer out the opening, across the dead gardens, and into the street.
The Haessari patrols were rushing toward each other. Their dry, hissing language filled the small gardens as they converged. Orders were shouted and they began to spread out, but none of them were headed toward his position. Not yet. They were focused on the area closest to the low wall.
A sudden hiss filled the silence of the grass tower’s entrance, followed by a familiar flapping of skin.
The opening of one of the Snake People’s cowls.
Colin spun, raising his staff defensively a moment before the creature struck. He caught a blur of movement in the darkness, felt something heavy strike his staff, and then he was driven back into the wall. The attacker crashed into him, pressing him back, its mouth caught on the staff. Venom splattered against Colin’s face, burned, but he thrust with all of his strength, drawing his sword as the weight shifted away. He slashed downward, felt it connect, but only lightly, heard a resultant hiss of pain.
He needed to kill this one quickly, before it could warn the others.
But as he shifted his position, stepping forward to clear space for his sword, ready to toss his staff aside, he realized there was more than one of them here.
The entire inner room—what must once have been a foyer—was shifting. Figures were rising from rest, their motions torpid, but even in the faint light of dawn that filtered through the entrance he could see their anger. In the glint of an eye, the flaring of a hood, the flicker of forked tongues as they tasted the air, savored his fear. There were too many to count, nothing but a sense of slithering movement in the shadows. The hiss from the first was joined by others.
He’d stumbled into one of their nests.
A frisson of instinctual terror cascaded down through his body, tingling from his head down to his toes. His fingers tightened on the handle of his sword and the length of his staff; the muscles in his stomach clenched. Sweat broke out across his entire body, prickling with heat in his armpits and down his back.
The waking Haessari hissed again in excitement, began moving faster.
He’d never be able to silence them all, never be able to dodge all of their strikes. Not without slowing or halting time.
A cold calm settled over him, sluicing through the fear-sweat. He’d hoped to make it to the Well without warning Walter, but he’d never really expected it. This simply meant he’d have less time to do what needed to be done.
He took a step toward the doorway, his body relaxed, sword lowered. The Haessari closest to him lurched forward, still groggy from their slumber. In the growing light, their mottled skin glistened as if wet. They wore nothing but a breech clout. One of them, the nearest—with a slick cut along its upper leg seeping blood—hissed harshly, mouth opening wide.
Colin straightened. “Sorry to have disturbed you.”
It lunged. With only a tweak of time, Colin swung his blade and loped off its head, blood spurting from the wound in a gush. Before its head thudded to the ground at the mouth of the doorway, Colin seized time and spun, plummeting out the door and down the steps. The Haessari he’d dodged were spread out in the dead garden area beneath the tower and the low wall. He darted to the side, began circling the tower’s base, heading toward the pulsating power of the Source.
He’d taken five steps when he felt a fluctuation in the fabric of the world around him, nothing more than a tug, as if someone had tweaked the sleeve of his shirt.
Walter.
Sword still drawn, staff in his other hand, Colin charged headlong down the steps of the tower’s far side, the orange-yellow glow of dawn to the east and the throbbing blue-white light of the Source dead ahead.
Walter knew he was here now, and he was coming for him.
* * *
Corim trudged up the stone steps to the parapet behind the rest of his unit, his mind foggy from the mostly sleepless night. Ahead of him, Wade scrambled forward, nearly knocking over those in front of him, shoving a few of them out of the way. Rory raced on his heels, along with a few other boys, but Harden hung back. The taller boy looked haggard, the skin beneath his eyes bruised.
“Couldn’t sleep much either, huh?” he said, when he saw Corim looking at him.
“No.” Corim had fallen into his cot exhausted, expecting to drop off before he’d even had time to think about it. But that hadn’t happened. He’d closed his eyes, but his mind raced, skating through image after image of the battle, vibrating with its intensity. He’d tossed and turned for a full hour before giving up and rolling onto his back, hands behind his head, and simply stared up into the darkness above. He’d listened to the snores and restless, rustling movements of his unit, and the near constant clatter and clang in the streets and the walls beyond.
After the roar of the battle, it had sounded surprisingly quiet.
He’d drifted in and out of a half daze the entire night, until Braxton had shaken him completely awake not twenty minutes ago.
He followed Wade, Rory, and the rest onto the battlements, his stomach rumbling in protest, his hands throbbing, his arms aching and limp at his sides. Wade and Rory rushed to their positions on the wall, claiming a crenellation and leaning out over the stone to get a look at the field. Dawn’s light streaked the sky to the east, most of this side of Temeritt’s hill still deep in shadow, including the wall, but the plains below—
Coming up behind Wade, Corim halted abruptly. Harden gasped to one side. All along the wall, the soldiers of the Legion and the men, women, and children who’d sought refuge in Temeritt and now fought for their survival were steadily falling silent as the darkness on the plains before the walls was revealed.
Beneath the charred remains of the Autumn Tree, the Horde’s camp had nearly tripled in size. Fresh pennants were flying, too distant for Corim to make out, but he knew they weren’t all the same as the ones they’d been watching for the past few months. And not all of the vague figures he could see moving through the new tents were familiar either. He thought there were more Alvritshai, but a significant portion of the new army were shorter, their gait somehow odd. Not quite lurching forward, but close. And their heads—
“Are those snouts?” Rory asked, trying to push forward to see better. “It looks like they have snouts.”
“Something like that,” Harden said. “They certainly don’t look human, or Alvritshai. Too tall to be dwarren.”
“But they’re walking on two legs.”
“So do the trolls, and most of the other twisted creatures of the Horde. Doesn’t mean much.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Wade said brusquely. “We’ll kill them all, whatever they are. Just like we’ve done to the others.”
Corim locked gazes with Harden, saw his own despair mirrored in the other boy’s eyes.
“How are we going to do that?” Rory asked. “Look at how many of them there are!”
Wade smacked him hard on the back of the head. “Don’t talk like that. We’ll kill them all.” Then, in a far weaker voice: “We have to.”
“I heard they came from the northeast,” Harden ventured after a long awkward silence. “Do you think they destroyed Yhnar before coming here? Or maybe they attacked the dwarren and that’s why they haven’t come to help us like they were supposed to.”
Wade snorted in contempt. “The dwarren never intended to help us. They’re probably part of the Horde, like the Alvritshai.”
“No,” Corim said sharply. “I saw them at Gray’s Kill, the night we were attacked. At first we thought they were the ones who attacked, but Gregson said that it looked like the dwarren had been fighting the creatures. They weren’t part of the Horde.”
“Then where are they? If they were to honor the Accord, they should be here, helping us.”
“Maybe they’ve been attacked themselves.”
Wade rolled his eyes and turned back to the crenellation and the field beyond.
Harden shifted closer, exuding an uneasiness that now permeated everyone along the entire wall. “What are we going to do?”
“That isn’t up to us.”
* * *
“What are we going to do?” Akers grumbled.
GreatLord Kobel didn’t answer. He, along with Akers, Tarken Sohn, and a few of his Legion commanders, were clustered at the top of the main gates, sealed once again against the Horde. Akers had returned a mere hour before, along with only a fifth of the men who’d accompanied him in the raid on the Horde’s camp. The rest of the men had died creating the havoc that distracted the Horde from Temeritt’s walls or in the flight back to the boats. Kobel knew that some of the men had likely been cut off from reaching the boats by the arrival of these new reinforcements, whoever—or whatever—they were. According to Akers’ report, he’d waited until the last possible moment before ordering those that had reached the lake’s edge to retreat in the boats back to the hidden cavern and its stone docks. Kobel and Tarken had watched the Horde’s new forces march across the plains from the northeast, skirting the lake to the north. Both of them were exhausted, but not half as much as Akers. The once robust lord wove erratically where he stood, near collapse, although he refused to leave the tower to rest, even at Kobel’s direct order.
“What do you make out?” Kobel asked. Tarken had taken the spyglass from him a few moments earlier.
“A good-sized force of Alvritshai. More than were here earlier. At least three times as many, maybe more. I’d say there are over five thousand Alvritshai on the field now.”
“Which Houses?”
Tarken hesitated, shifting the spyglass over the encampment. “I only see the banners of one House, the same black and gold eagle’s talon we’ve seen before. But some of the newcomers’ armor doesn’t bear the same colors.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Akers said, echoing Kobel’s thoughts. “If there are Phalanx from other Houses on the field, why aren’t they flying their own colors?”
“What about the rest of the army?”
“They’re…some kind of lizard creatures,” Tarken Sohn answered hesitantly. “Or maybe snake. They’re walking on two legs, appear to have arms and hands—they’re carrying swords—but their heads... They have some kind of scaled skin and blunt noses.”
Kobel’s hand rose to rub at his eyes. He’d hoped he’d been seeing things, that the light had distorted the creatures, or that lack of sleep had clouded his vision. “I estimated close to ten thousand of the snake creatures. That, along with the Alvritshai and the rest of the Horde on the field—maybe twenty thousand in all.” There were perhaps forty thousand people in Temeritt altogether. A maximum of ten thousand of whom were fit to fight, even if they were half starved.
Any chance of fighting their way free of the Horde had vanished.
“This force must have been what the group holding us here inside the walls was waiting for. They didn’t need to break us. They only needed to keep us penned up, like animals waiting for slaughter.”
“And now the butcher’s arrived.”
Kobel glanced toward Tarken Sohn at the comment, but Tarken had trained the spyglass west, toward the rolling hills.
A hard lance of hope speared Kobel’s chest and he jerked his head to the west, took an involuntary step forward. But he could see nothing on the horizon. No tell-tale smoke, no plume of dust stirred up by marching feet.
“No sign of the king,” Tarken said simply.
Somehow, the unexpected death of that knot of hope hurt worse than all of the wounds he’d received during the fighting the previous day and night. He leaned against the stone parapet, felt its solidity in the rough surface and grit beneath his palms.
Drawing strength from the walls that had kept them safe for so long, he pushed back and turned to face Akers, Tarken Sohn, and the Legion commanders who’d stood stolidly behind them in silence during the entire conversation. His eyes settled on Commander Leighten.
Leighten straightened almost imperceptibly. “GreatLord?”
“Commander Leighten. Go to the palace and inform Lady Echeri that the time has come to flee the city. She should begin the evacuation as planned, starting now. You are to remain with her as escort. Do not leave her side for any reason.”
Leighten bowed slightly at the waist, his fist over his heart. “As you command, GreatLord.”
He stalked toward the stairs leading down to the courtyard and the streets of Temeritt, motioning others from his unit to join him as he went. Kobel had already turned to the rest of the waiting commanders.
“Take your stations along the wall. The Horde may have received reinforcements, but they have not yet breached our walls. We will hold until King Justinian arrives. No more sorties. No more sneak attacks by night. Hold the walls, at all costs. Dismissed.”
The commanders saluted, fists to chests, then departed.
Akers shifted forward, facing outwards as he leaned wearily against the wall. “Do you think Echeri and the others have a chance?”
“Depends on whether the Horde’s scouts discover them and the hidden exit or not.”
“We didn’t have much luck passing single messengers through their scouts earlier. This will be an entire city of refugees.”
As if on cue, church bells began to ring in the city, starting near the gates, but spreading quickly. Kobel felt the people of the city pause as the portent of the bells sank in, then resume with perhaps a little more urgency, their tasks abandoned, their steps taking them quickly toward home and hearth and family, and then from there to the palace.
Those who were still well enough and able to move about.
Akers’ hand suddenly gripped Kobel’s arm tight. “The Horde is moving.”
“Sound the warning.”
Tarken signaled and a moment later a horn sounded, repeated like an echo down both sides of the wall. Then the GreatLord of Yhnar joined him at his left, Akers on his right. A stiff breeze caught the Temeritt banners all along the parapet, snapping them fitfully. Kobel once again placed his hands on the rough stone of the wall.
