XV
FROM where he stood, safe outside on the back of the city of Threerivers, where the wall was highest, Brudoer saw that heavy cloud cover had darkened the night. He breathed the drifting summer night and looked into the darkness. He leaned back against the solid side of the Broad Tower, where the guardsmen passed normally only twice a night quarter because it was so inaccessible. But with the guard force nearly depleted, guardsmen seldom passed there, and if one were to come, Brudoer had only to roll down under the curve of the tower to be completely hidden.
He had been leaning back and musing on his strange situation for some time when he heard a faint sound far below. He leaned out and looked down. He could see nothing in the blackness, but he could hear noises, soft but numerous. Then he caught a low voice. Something grated lightly on the wall. Something else touched. A force was trying to scale the wall. Brudoer looked a moment longer, then ran for the stairs.
Warret and Bival lay in each other’s arms, completely drained from water-lifting, when Brudoer blundered into their room in the dark. He put his hand on something. A leg. Bival started. Hands frantically worked up her body and shook her shoulders. “Warret, Warret,” a voice whispered frantically.
Warret stirred, then heaved upright, rolling Bival aside and grappling outward. Brudoer came in to him and held against him. “Warret, it’s Brudoer. Come. Alarm the guardsmen. People are trying to scale the rear wall. Behind the Broad Tower.”
“What? Brudoer? What?”
“It’s true. Wake up. Do something. I’ve got to get out of here.” Brudoer gave him one more shake, then wrenched free as Warret stood. Brudoer blundered his way to the door and disappeared outside.
“What in Aven’s—”
“Go, Warret. He might be right.” Bival swung out of bed, groped across the room, and blew up the punk, lighting a candle. Warret was struggling into a tunic. He raced out the door and up the wide stairs, yelling, “Guardsmen, guardsmen!”
A torch appeared before he reached the terrace levels, and a guardsman, short-sword drawn, awaited him. “To the rear wall, quick,” Warret yelled, racing by. The guardsman sheathed and followed, torch streaming. As Warret came toward the wall, he saw an arm reach over it. He grabbed it, twisted, and threw. The arm came back and clung, but the guardsman, right behind him, leaned over and thrust at the man’s face with the torch. With a scream, the man let go as the guardsman took an arrow through the neck and fell backward.
Yelling for help, Warret snatched the short-sword from her dead hand, and raced to hack another arm as it appeared over the wall farther down. He dodged back quickly and several arrows whisked by from below. More torches approached from inside, though, as the entire duty force arrived. If they showed themselves as they hurried to their posts, arrows flashed up at them almost instantly. Finally a guardsman brought an archer’s wall—a wooden barrier with one willow-leaf hole in it—and guardsmen flung oil-soaked torches over the wall while the guardcaptain leaned the archer’s wall over the edge to look. He could see men below scurrying to put out the flames already spreading on the grass. With the arrival of two more archer’s walls, guardsmen began putting arrows into the attackers.
“Peshtak,” the guardcaptain yelled. “At least three hundred. Thank Aven you were awake, Warret. How did you ever find them? Who would have thought that they would try the highest side. Look at that scaffolding.”
“I… uh,” said Warret.
“Sometimes we get too tired to sleep and come out to look at the night,” Bival answered from behind him. Warret whirled and looked at her.
Just then an arrow from below whacked into the very edge of the guardcaptain’s peephole, and she jerked back, trembling. “Whew,” she muttered. “They can shoot.”
Three more archer’s walls came up, and arrows also began to flick from the row of narrow loopholes on the whorled tower to the north. A horn blew below, and the Peshtak began to draw back.
“Kill them as far as you can shoot them,” the guardcaptain shouted.
“That is not the Pelbar way,” a voice said behind her, and she spun to see Udge standing in her night robe, puffy-eyed, back from the wall.
“Pardon, Protector. We need to sting them. There are more of them out there than we have here. But for Warret and Bival, they would be killing you in your bed right now. Should we send a message bird to Pelbarigan?”
“Did you not repulse them?” Just then she looked down and saw the dead guardsman with the arrow through her throat. She let out a little screech and turned away. “Any others hurt?” she asked, looking upward.
“Two over here, Protector. Only wounded,” a guardsman called.
“Very well. Secure the walls.” She turned away and returned to her chambers.
On the far side of Threerivers, a Peshtak threw his grappling hook up to the small garden niche that faced west, just below the level of the second terrace. He pulled down, testing the hold, then started up the rope. Five men waited below, one holding the rope end. The man had scaled most of the wall when a small bell rang and he felt a grating above him. Suddenly the wall rock pivoted about its middle, and with a slight cry, the man fell, spinning, landing with a thud below. Above, the wall rock pivoted back into place. The Peshtak below felt their comrade’s wrist but found no pulse. They looked up but could make out only an old man. He held something in his hand.
Another Peshtak screamed and clutched his side where an arrow stuck out from it. Three arrows flashed up toward the high battlement, but the old man was gone. Then a longbow shaft thudded into another attacker. The rest looked, saw nothing, then ran, dragging the wounded man. Another Peshtak went down as they ran. They left him behind on the ground.
In the morning, the only Peshtak the Threerivers Pelbar could see were the dead—a total of fourteen. “Not many out of that force,” the guardcaptain said.
“I wish the Protector would let us send a message bird to Pelbarigan,” a guardsman said.
Another nudged her, nodding toward the guardcaptain. “She already did,” she whispered. “At dawn.”
“Sssst,” the guardcaptain said, glaring.
They all smiled, saying no more.
That afternoon Bival and Warret set out on separate but related missions. Bival stopped into the guardcaptain’s room where the woman’s husband was rubbing her shoulders with soybean oil. “Something you should know.”
“Umm?”
“I know you won’t tell. I saw the message bird go.”
The guardcaptain looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Umm,” she said again.
“It was Brudoer that saved us. Brudoer came from somewhere and woke us in bed. He told us somebody was on the east wall, then ran off. This is the truth.”
“Brudoer? You’re sure?”
“Yes, guardcaptain. He saved us all. We will need to remember that.”
“Umm,” the guardcaptain said. “Good to know.”
Bival turned and left “Think that’s true, love?” the man asked, rubbing in the oil. He was a small man, but his arms rippled with strength.
“That’s good. Ah, right by the neck. But softer.” The guardcaptain sighed. “Who knows? She may be easing her conscience. But if he turns up, we will treat him as if it’s true.”
“Stick the Protector.”
“Where, my love?”
“Anywhere you’d like. Figuratively, of course.”
“All right, love. Anywhere in her figuratively.”
Warret had stopped in to see Pion a moment and told him of his encounter with Brudoer. He found the boy’s father noncommital. It dawned on him that Pion already knew Brudoer was all right. Of course. The boy would have communicated.
“Where is he? How does he hide?” Warret asked.
“Who knows?”
“Please. Bival knows her mistake. We need to work together now. If we can help Brudoer in any way, we will.”
Pion looked at him. “Who can help anyway so long as the city is run the way it is?”
“Well, we have to keep it running. Something will develop.”
“Or collapse. When have I ever done anything but keep the city running?”
“You aren’t alone, Pion. I, too. It’s not so bad. That’s what people do.”
“Some of them.” Pion turned away. Warret stared at him a moment, then left.
Back from the river, Annon stood in a circle of Peshtak. He spat. “We almost had it. They are undermanned, clear. How many did we lose?”
“Fifteen, Command Annon, including the one who died this morning.”
Annon spat again. “And got nowhere. Well, we’ll move south again and await the probe below the Oh, down where Misque is. We’ll let these cool down. They may call the others. At least we know these only have arrows. We’ll think of something. Not bad, Steelet. We almost had it. We did it well enough. It was only a chance. Next time maybe it’ll be our chance.”
Two weeks later, Jaiyan’s Station was burning. Dead Siveri old ones littered the yard. Misque knelt, crying, grappling the knees of Rute, the Subcommand. “No,” she said. “No, don’t kill them, No more. They’ll do no harm. This is all there is here. The big young one is simple-minded. The other one is a good man. Please? No.”
Rute jerked his knee into her cheek and she fell back, crying. He looked down at her in disgust “When have any of them showed pity on us? Any?”
“These would. Please?” She fell at his feet, moaning and crying.
He looked at the other men, nonplussed. One said, “Just don’t hurt her, Subcommand. She’s my sister-in-law. I’ll take it hard.”
Rute spun away. “All right, Atchun, you take care of her. When she’s recovered, tell her I want a full report on what she knows here and south. Tell her we’ll keep the rest safe. We’ll have to drag them along.”
“For now?”
“If I give my word to a Peshtak, Atchun, I keep it. Generally. But Annon will not be bound.”
Misque sat up, her hands covering her face. Alongside her, Atchun hissed, “Stop it. Stop it. You’ve shamed us all. What’s got into you.”
She looked up at her brother-in-law’s face, and saw the sores at the base of his nose. She gasped. “Oh, Atchun. No. What will we do? Oh, no, no.”
“Stop it. Others have borne it. I will bear it, too.” She stood and put her arms around him.
Far to the north, in the Pelbarigan ice caves, the Peshtak called Red by the guardsmen also felt the root of his nose. It had been sore a long time. So he was the one diseased. He heard voices outside the cell coming through the caves.
A guardsman appeared and remarked, “Well, Red, here’s Royal to see you. Be good. Promise?”
Red said nothing.
“All right, then.” The guardsman deftly pulled the two chains that drew the Peshtak’s manacled arms back against the wall. The Peshtak grimaced, watching the dark old man come slowly into the cell, carrying a box, which he put down and opened. The Peshtak saw something glimmer inside.
“It’s me, then. It’s me. Bull dung. I know it is.”
Royal looked at the Peshtak. “I’m afraid it is. But here is something we’ll try. I think it may help—at least arrest things for a time. You’ll have to pardon the needle. It’s a little crude. It may hurt.” Royal washed the Peshtak’s shoulder. The guardsman held a sharp short-sword against that side of the Peshtak’s throat so he couldn’t lunge at the old physician as he had before. Red glared at him, then felt the sharp needle glide into him, hold, and draw back.
Royal sat down across the cell. “Now, my son. May I ask you—do you eat pigs at home?”
“Pigs? Are you crazy?”
“A simple yes or no would help us find a cure for you.”
Red trembled in a sweat. “Yeah. Of course we do. What fishgutted difference has that to do with anything?”
“And the other two men? Do they?”
“Of course they—” He paused. “I don’t know. There’s nothing to the pig theory. We thought of that. Plenty of people eat pigs and never get it.”
“Perhaps they eat pigs that are clean? Or maybe they do something to the meat that kills the microorganisms. Or maybe they don’t handle the uncooked meat or live pigs.”
Red surged against his chains, flailing and struggling. “How long are you going to keep me like this?”
“We have no wish to. You are a mad dog. You’d hurt somebody.”
The Peshtak glared at Royal and the guardsman. “We’ll let you go home if we find a cure to this Peshtak plague. We think you won’t be so murderous if you aren’t so desperate.”
Red sank down on his bunk, his arms still held up by the chains. The guardsman gave him some slack. As they turned to go, he said, “One thing.” They turned. “Tell the others it isn’t them. Tell them.”
“We did.”
Red lay back on the bunk and stared at the rock ceiling of his cell.