‘Oh, all right. I suppose so.’ Then the blond Pandion grinned up at his fellow-knight and he and his men began turning the capstan that raised the drawbridge.
‘Clown,’ Sparhawk muttered.
The significance of the simultaneous closing of the gate and raising of the drawbridge did not filter through the collective mind of the mob for quite some time. Then sounds of shouted commands and even occasional clashes of weapons from nearby buildings announced that at least some of the rebels were beginning, however faintly, to see the light.
Tentatively, warily, the torch-bearing mob began to converge on the pristinely white Elene castle, where the gaily-coloured silk buntings shivered tremulously in the night breeze and the lantern and candle-lit barges bobbed sedately in the moat.
‘Hello, the castle!’ a bull-voiced fellow in the front rank roared in execrable Elenic. ‘Lower your drawbridge, or we’ll storm your walls!’
‘Would you please reply to that, Bevier?’ Sparhawk called to his Cyrinic friend.
Bevier grinned and carefully shifted one of his catapults. He sighted carefully, elevated his line of sight so that the catapult was pointed almost straight up, and then he applied the torch to the mixture of pitch and naphtha in the spoon-like receptacle at the end of the catapult-arm. The mixture took fire immediately.
‘I command you to lower your drawbridge!’ the unshaven knave out beyond the moat bellowed arrogantly.
Bevier cut the retaining rope on the catapult-arm. The blob of dripping fire sizzled as it shot almost straight up into the air, then it slowed and seemed to hang motionless for a moment. Then it fell.
The ruffian who had been demanding admittance gaped at Bevier’s reply as it majestically rose into the night sky and then fell directly upon him like a comet. He vanished as he was engulfed in fire.
‘Good shot!’ Sparhawk called his compliment.
‘Not bad,’ Bevier replied modestly. ‘It was sort of tricky, because he was so close.’
‘I noticed that.’
Emperor Sarabian had gone very pale, and he was visibly shaken. ‘Did you have to do that, Sparhawk?’ He demanded in a choked voice as the now-frightened mob fled back across the lawns to positions that may or may not have been out of Sir Bevier’s range.
‘Yes, your Majesty,’ Sparhawk replied calmly. ‘We’re playing for time here. The bell that started to ring an hour or so ago was a sort of general signal. Caalador’s cutthroats took the ring-leaders into custody when it rang, Ehlana moved the party-goers inside the castle, and the Atan legions outside the city started to march as soon as they heard it. That loud-mouth who’s presently on fire at the edge of the moat is a graphic demonstration of just how truly unpleasant things are going to get if the mob decides to insist on being admitted. It’s going to take some serious encouragement to persuade them to approach us again.’
‘I thought you said you could hold them off.’
‘We can, but why risk lives if you don’t have to? You’ll note that there was no cheering or shouts when Bevier shot his catapult. Those people out there are staring at an absolutely silent, apparently unmanned castle that almost negligently obliterates offensive people. That’s a terrifying sort of thing to contemplate. This is the part of the siege that frequently lasts for several years.’ Sparhawk looked down the parapet. ‘I think it’s time for us to move inside that turret, your Majesties,’ he suggested. ‘We can’t be positive that Khalad disabled all the crossbows – or that somebody in the mob hasn’t repaired a few. I’d have a great deal of trouble explaining why I was careless enough to let one of you get killed. We can see what’s going on from the turret, and I’ll feel much better if you’ve both got nice thick stone walls around you.’
‘Shouldn’t we rupture those barges now, dear?’ Ehlana asked him.
‘Not just yet. We’ve got the potential for inflicting a real disaster on the besiegers there. Let’s not waste it.’
Some few of the crossbows in the hands of the mob functioned properly, but not very many. There seemed to be a great deal of swearing about that.
A serious attempt to re-open the gates of the compound fell apart when the Peloi, their sabres flashing and their shrill, ululating war cries echoing back from the walls of nearby opalescent palaces charged across the neatly-clipped lawns to savage the crowd clustered around the gate.
Then, because once the Peloi have been unleashed they are very hard to rein in again, the tribesmen from the marches of eastern Pelosia sliced back and forth through the huddled mass cowering on the grass. The palace guards who had joined the mob made some slight effort to respond, but the Peloi horsemen gleefully rode them down.
Sephrenia and Vanion entered the turret. The small Styric woman’s white gown gleamed in the shaft of moonlight that streamed in through the door. ‘What are you thinking of, Sparhawk?’ she demanded angrily. ‘This isn’t a safe place for Ehlana and Sarabian.’
‘I think it’s as safe as I can manage, little mother. Ehlana, what would you say if I told you that you had to go inside?’
‘I’d say no, Sparhawk. I’d crawl out of my skin if you locked me up in some safe room where I couldn’t see what’s going on.’
‘I sort of thought you might feel that way. And you, Emperor Sarabian?’
‘Your wife just nailed my feet to the floor, Sparhawk. How could I possibly run off and hide while she’s standing up here on the wall like the figurehead on a warship?’ The emperor looked at Sephrenia. ‘Is this insane foolhardiness a racial characteristic of these barbarians?’ he asked her.
She sighed. ‘You wouldn’t believe some of the things they’re capable of, Sarabian,’ she replied, throwing a quick smile at Vanion.
‘At least someone in that mob’s still thinking coherently, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said to his friend. ‘He’s just realised that there are all sorts of unpleasant implications in the fact that they can’t get in here or out of the compound. He’s out there trying to whip them up by telling them that they’re doomed unless they take this castle.’
‘I hope he’s also telling them that they’re doomed if they try,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘I’d imagine that he’s glossing over that part. I had some misgivings about you when you were a novice, my friend. You and Kalten seemed like a couple of wild colts, but now that you’ve settled down, you’re really quite good. Your strategy here has been brilliant, you know. You actually haven’t embarrassed me too much this time.’
‘Thanks, Vanion,’ Sparhawk said dryly.
‘No charge.’
The rebels approached the moat tentatively, their faces filled with apprehension and their eyes fixed on the night sky, desperately searching for that first flicker of fire which would announce that Sir Bevier was sending them greetings. The chance passage of a shooting-star across the velvet throat of night elicited screams of fright, followed by a vast nervous laugh.
The gleaming, brightly-lit castle, however, remained silent. No soldiers lined the battlements. No globs of liquid fire sprang into the night sky from within those nacreous walls.
The defenders crouched silently behind the battlements and waited.
‘Good,’ Vanion muttered after a quick glance out of one of the embrasures in the turret. ‘Someone saw the potential of those barges. They’ve clapped together some scaling ladders.’
‘We have to rupture those barges now, Vanion!’ Ehlana exclaimed urgently.
‘You didn’t tell her?’ Vanion asked Sparhawk.
‘No. The concept might have been difficult for her to accept.’
‘You’d better take her back inside the castle then, my friend. What’s going to happen next is likely to upset her a great deal.’
‘Will you two stop talking about me as if I weren’t even here?’ Ehlana burst out in exasperation. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘You’d better tell her,’ Vanion said bleakly.
‘We can start that fire at any time, Ehlana,’ Sparhawk said as gently as he could. ‘In a situatio
n like this, fire’s a weapon. It’s not tactically practical to waste it by setting it off before your enemies are around to receive its benefits.’
She stared at him, the blood draining from her face. ‘This wasn’t what I’d planned, Sparhawk!’ she said vehemently. ‘The fire’s supposed to keep them away from the moat. I didn’t want you to burn them alive with it.’
‘I’m sorry, Ehlana. It’s a military decision. A weapon’s useless unless you demonstrate your willingness to employ it. I know it’s hard to accept, but if we take your plan to its ultimate application, it may save lives in the long run. We’re outnumbered here in Tamuli, and if we don’t establish a certain reputation for ruthlessness, we’ll be over-run the next time there’s a confrontation.’
‘You’re a monster!’
‘No, dear. I’m a soldier.’
She suddenly started to cry.
‘Would you take her inside now, little mother?’ Sparhawk asked Sephrenia. ‘I think we’d all rather she didn’t see this.’
Sephrenia nodded and took the weeping queen to the stairway leading down from the turret.
‘You might want to go too, your Majesty,’ Vanion suggested to Sarabian. ‘Sparhawk and I are more or less accustomed to this sort of unpleasantness. You don’t have to watch, though.’
‘No, I’ll stay, Lord Vanion,’ Sarabian said firmly.
‘That’s up to you, your Majesty.’
A sheet of crossbow bolts rattled against the battlements like hail. It appeared that the rebels had been repairing the results of Khalad’s tampering. Then, fearfully, splashing in panicky desperation, swimmers leapt from the edge of the moat and struggled their way to the barges to slip the mooring lines. The barges were quickly pulled to shore, and the rebels, their makeshift scaling-ladders already raised, swarmed on board and began to pole their way rapidly across the moat to the sheer castle-wall.
Sparhawk stuck his head out through the doorway of the turret. ‘Kalten!’ he hissed to his friend who was crouched down on the parapet not far from the turret. ‘Pass the word! Tell the Atans to get ready!’
‘Right.’
‘But tell them not to move until they hear the signal.’
‘I know what I’m doing, Sparhawk. Quit treating me like an idiot.’
‘Sorry.’
The urgent whisper sped around the battlements.
‘Your timing’s perfect, Sparhawk,’ Vanion said tensely in a low voice. ‘I just saw Kring’s signal from the compound wall. The Atans are outside the gate.’ He paused. ‘You’re having an unbelievable run of good luck, you know. Nobody could have guessed in advance that the mob would start up the wall and the Atans would arrive at precisely the same time.’
‘Probably not,’ Sparhawk agreed. ‘I think we might want to do something nice for Aphrael the next time we see her.’
In the moat below, the barges bumped against the castle walls, and the rebels began their desperate scramble up the ladders towards the ominously silent battlements.
Another urgent whisper slithered back around the parapet.
‘The barges are all up against the wall now, Sparhawk!’ Kalten whispered hoarsely.
‘All right.’ Sparhawk drew in a deep breath. ‘Tell Ulath to give the signal.’
‘Ulath!’ Kalten shouted, no longer even bothering to whisper. ‘Toot your horn!’
‘Toot?’ Ulath’s voice was outraged. Then his Ogre-horn rang out its message of pain and death.
From around the parapet, great boulders were lifted, teetered a moment on the battlements and then plummeted down onto the swarming decks of the barges below. The barges ruptured, splintered and began to sink. The viscous mixture of naphtha and pitch spread out across the surface of the moat. The spreading slick was rainbow-hued and, Sparhawk absently thought, really rather pretty.
The towering Atans rose from their places of concealment, took up the lanterns conveniently hanging from the battlements and hurled them down into the moat like a hundred flaring comets.
The rebels who had leaped from the sinking barges and who were struggling in the oily water below screamed in terror as they saw flaming death raining down on them from above.
The moat exploded. A sheet of blue fire shot across the naphtha-stained water, and it was immediately followed by towering billows of sooty orange flame and dense black smoke. There were volcano-like eruptions from the sinking barges as the deadly, unspilled naphtha still in their holds took fire. The flames belched upward to sear the rebels still clinging to the scaling ladders. They fell or jumped from the burning ladders, streaking flame as they plunged into the inferno below.
The screams were dreadful. Some few of the burning men reached the far bank of the moat and ran blindly across the tidy lawns of the compound, shrieking and dripping fire.
The rebels who had stood at the brink of the moat impatiently awaiting their turn to cross the intervening water to scale the walls recoiled in horror from the sudden conflagration that had just made the gleaming castle of the Elenes as unreachable as the far side of the moon.
‘Ulath!’ Sparhawk roared. ‘Tell Kring to open the gate!’
Once more the Ogre-horn sang.
The massive gates of the compound swung slowly open, and the golden Atan giants, running in perfect unison, swept into the imperial compound like an avalanche.
CHAPTER 30
‘I don’t know how they did it, Sparhawk,’ Caalador replied with a dark scowl. ‘Krager himself hasn’t been seen for days. He’s a slippery one, isn’t he?’ Caalador had come in from the city and located Sparhawk on the parapet.
‘That he is, my friend. What about the others? I wouldn’t have thought that Elron could have managed something like that.’
‘Neither would I. He was doing everything but wearing a sign reading “conspirator” on his forehead – all that swirling of his cape and exaggerated tip-toeing through back alleys.’ Caalador shook his head. ‘Anyway, he was staying in the house of a local Edomish nobleman. We know he was inside, because we watched him go in through the front door. We were watching every single door and window, so we know he didn’t come back out, but he wasn’t inside when we went to pick him up.’
There was a crash from a nearby palace as the Atans broke in the doors to get at the rebels hiding inside.
‘Did your people check the house for hidden rooms or passages?’ Sparhawk asked.
Caalador shook his head. ‘They stood the Edomish noble barefoot in a brazier of hot coals instead. It’s faster that way. There was no place to hide in that house. I’m sorry, Sparhawk. We picked up all the second-raters without a hitch, but the leaders –’ He spread his hands helplessly.
‘Somebody was probably using magic. They’ve done it before.’
‘Can you really do that sort of thing with magic?’
‘I can’t, but I’m sure Sephrenia knows the proper spells.’
Caalador looked out over the battlements. ‘Well, at least we broke up this attack on the government. That’s the main thing.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ Sparhawk disagreed.
‘It was fairly important, Sparhawk. If they’d succeeded, all of Tamuli would have flown apart. As soon as the Atans finish mopping up, we’ll be able to start questioning survivors – and those underlings we did manage to catch. They might be able to direct us to the important plotters.’
‘I sort of doubt it. Krager’s very good at this sort of thing. I think we’ll find that the underlings don’t actually have a lot of information. It’s a shame. I really wanted to have a little talk with Krager.’
‘You always get that tone of voice when you talk about him.’ Caalador observed. ‘Is there something personal between you two?’
‘Oh, yes, and it goes back a long, long ways. I’ve missed any number of opportunities to kill him – usually because it wasn’t convenient. I was usually too busy concentrating on the man who employed him, and that may have been a mistake. Krager always makes sure that he’s got just enough information t
o make him too valuable to kill. The next time I come across him, I think I’ll just ignore that.’
The Atans were efficiency personified as they rounded up the rebels. They offered the armed insurgents one opportunity to surrender each time they surrounded a group, and they didn’t ask twice. By two hours past midnight, the imperial compound was quiet again. A few Atan patrols searched the grounds and buildings for any rebels who might have gone into hiding, but there was little in the way of significant activity.
Sparhawk was bone-tired. Though he had not physically participated in the suppression of the rebellion, the tension had exhausted him more than a two-hour battle might have. He stood on the parapet looking wearily down into the compound, watching without much interest as the grounds-keepers, who had been pressed into service for the unpleasant task, cringingly pulled the floating dead out of the moat.
‘Why don’t you go to bed, Sparhawk?’ It was Khalad. His bare, heavy shoulders gleamed in the torchlight. His voice and appearance and brusque manner were so much like his father’s that Sparhawk once again felt that brief, renewed pang of sorrow.
‘I just want to be sure that there won’t be any bodies left floating in the moat when my wife wakes up tomorrow morning. People who’ve been burned to death aren’t very pretty.’
‘I’ll take care of that. Let’s go to the bath-house. I’ll help you out of your armour, and you can soak in a tub of hot water for a while.’
‘I didn’t really exert myself very much this evening, Khalad. I didn’t even work up a sweat.’
‘You don’t have to. That smell’s so ingrained into your armour that five minutes after you put it on, you smell as if you haven’t bathed for a month.’
‘It’s one of the drawbacks of the profession. Are you sure you want to be a knight?’
‘It wasn’t my idea in the first place.’
‘Maybe when this is all over, the world will settle down enough so that there won’t be any need for armoured knights any more.’
‘Of course, and maybe someday fish will fly too.’