The cloth caught the wind, billowing into a bold and black flag, fluttering from the window of the tower where Merit waited for Barden’s arrival. This slip of cloth was her signal, the one that would tell her uncle or her generals where to find her. With the flag raised, all she could do was wait and watch for their armies to approach. If Ren had done his task, the way was clear and the sack of Solus had begun.
All her hopes rested on that boy. She prayed she could trust him. Ren had looked younger than she imagined, but it had been difficult to see his true face through the ash that smeared his brow. He had the look of a soldier who’d just come from the fight, or was still in the midst of one. It was a hungry look, desperate too. He wanted more than anything to get out of this city. She saw that. The boy brimmed with determination. It overwhelmed his every aspect. He’d give his life to get those men out of Solus, and the kingsguard would do the same just to keep the bastard alive. They truly were a desperate bunch, caught in desperate circumstances. She doubted the soldiers at the gate would have half a chance against the Harkans. She wished her people well, and Ren too. Merit still recalled that little boy, the young heir to the kingdom, tearing through the Horning, knocking over urns—just as she’d said. He’d been her brother once. She’d sworn never to regret what she’d done to him, how she’d tried to keep him out of Harwen. Again, she told herself that she had acted in the interests of the kingdom, but she knew it was a lie. She’d sought to preserve her power by suppressing Ren’s. She’d believed her lie all the way up until the moment she met the boy. Ren had spared her life. He’d shown mercy on her and agreed to Barden’s plan.
An alarm rang in the distance, a bell of some kind. A moment later, the first of her uncle’s soldiers rode into view. Their charge was unexpectedly swift. With only the city guard to stifle his push, Barden’s soldiers rode, almost without resistance, through the streets.
Merit’s heart warmed. In war, as in life, few things went as planned. Nevertheless, this one time all things were in place. Barden and his armies went their separate ways, the free companies going in one direction, the outlanders in another. Both set about plundering the city, and Barden joined in the mayhem. His soldiers threw torches on every hut, hovel, and house they passed. The people of Solus packed their roofs with firewood and foodstuffs, lamp oil too. The blaze spread quickly. The palm-leaf-shaded markets took to flame just as easily as the linen-draped alleyways. A red haze followed Barden’s charge, glowing more brightly as he approached. Soon he would reach her tower, and she’d join him. She’d lead the charge, and their army would meet with Harkana’s at the Shroud Wall. That had been the plan, at least.
As Barden’s riders came upon the Waset, he passed the great Circus of Re, where the crowds still cheered at some unseen spectacle, unaware of the terror that swept through their city. Apparently, no one knew what transpired in the streets outside the ring, so the applause continued and the invaders rode past, skipping the circus altogether, leaving it for the outlanders perhaps.
Barden rode at a frightening pace. He must have decided that shock was the best mode of attack, that if he rode all the way to the Shroud Wall the fight would be done before it was started, their foes demoralized and confused.
He only slowed at the steps of the Waset. At a trot, he moved down the wide stair, down into the heart of the old city, to the place where Merit waited atop the tower, black banner calling to him in the breeze. Once more she felt a surge of pride at seeing what her uncle had done, what she had in fact done. They’d dealt the blow her father had only dreamed of. The Harkans had once more taken Solus, but this time they weren’t going to occupy the city.
When Barden ran out of torches, his men shot flaming arrows. They hurled burning tar from slings, setting fires wherever they went. If the dust and sand could have been lit aflame, he’d have put them to the torch as well.
Barden passed a garden of what appeared to be golden statues, then a great and towering arch of white marble. He rode to the mighty Shroud Wall, then turned and galloped straight at Merit’s tower. The sun had risen, but it was only a faint glow on the eastern horizon, a smoldering ember in an already-ashen sky. The windows were too narrow for her to poke her head out, but the cloth waved and she guessed he’d spotted it. He rode so close to her tower that she could almost see the color of his eyes, and her flag caught the wind once more as if to assert itself, but Barden simply shrugged and rode on, disappearing behind a high wall and a long line of riders. He was gone, and Merit had no idea if he had seen the banner or not, but the man had disappeared.
She waited, hoping he would circle around or send back soldiers to fetch her. She allowed him a bit of time, in case he was engaged in some unexpected conflict. She strained to get a look at him, moving from window to window. She saw house soldiers of every color, and the yellow cloaks were out and about, trying to hold back the flames, probably wondering what was the greater threat to the city: the fire or the man who lit it. Everywhere, the city buzzed with activity, but she’d lost sight of her uncle.
The realization came slowly to her, but it struck her nonetheless: Barden would not come to her aid. His plans had changed, or he’d never revealed their true nature. Whatever the case, he’d seen her banner and ignored it. For some reason, he’d chosen to leave her in the tower. Perhaps he thought it safe. She could not guess at his intentions, nor were they her concern. She worried for herself and no one else. Merit needed an armed escort. If Barden refused or was unable to supply one, the Harkan Army would have to suffice. They knew the signal and were instructed to search for it. The army in black had besieged the north gate, but she didn’t know if they’d entered it. Perhaps something had gone awry. Maybe that was why Barden had ridden off. It was possible that he had gone off to help the Harkans, just as Ren and the kingsguard had assisted Barden. Is that why he left me? Perhaps he’ll come back, she thought, but only briefly. Merit knew false hope when she heard it.
In the wake of Barden’s charge, the outlanders followed. They came wearing rags or furs or nothing at all, their skin caked in woad or ash. Some looked as if they had emerged from the sand itself, the desert come back to reclaim the land it once owned. With clubs and axes, they tore statues from plinths and pried golden urns from temples.
The mercenary armies rode behind the outlanders. They marched an ever-increasing crowd of men and women in front of them. These must be the wealthy of Solus. Perhaps they were prisoners, or maybe the free companies planned to use the wellborn as a kind of shield, to deter an attack from the city guard or the house armies of the wealthy. Barden’s initial charge had ended; the city was on fire. The army of the Protector stood outside the walls of Solus and the various house armies were all chasing after Barden’s legions or trying to defend their palaces.
Only the Harkans were absent. She looked out to the many ramparts and pylons that composed the city walls, but the sand rose higher, obscuring her view of the city.
Who will come for me?
Wars were a messy affair, and she knew well that the Harkans might not reach her position, not for some time at least.
Something struck the tower wall. Someone’s at the door, thought Merit.
A second hit, this one loud enough to shake the stones, smacked the tower’s base. She pressed her head to one of the slots. The outlanders had taken a great beam, the kingpost from some half-destroyed roof, and were using it as a battering ram to strike the narrow stones that stood between the slotted windows at the tower’s lowest level. If they dislodged one of the columns, they could clear a space just wide enough for a man to slip inside.
The outlanders were coming.
She scrambled down the steps, calling out to her guard as she went. “Pull back the drawbar! Pull it back!” Once the outlanders entered the tower, she’d be trapped, and Merit knew exactly how that would end.
Her guard, a man named Garen, balked, so she slapped him on the cheek. “I am queen. Pull back that bar and thrust open the door. We’re going out into the streets. We’ll find some other place to shelter, perhaps the Temple of Mithra. This place is done.”
Garen hesitated once more, but she glared at him, so he went to work. Head shaking, he drew forth the heavy wooden plank, the wood screaming as it left the bracket. The door opened with equal resistance, turning slowly, by painful degrees, the man grunting as he went about his work. When the crack was wide enough, she slipped through the door’s opening and bade him follow. He made for the gap, but something held him back. Pale, dirt-encrusted hands pawed at his armor. Fingers wrapped his arms and chest, clawing at his face. The outlanders had entered. Garen stood his ground, blocking the door, pushing it closed as he pressed his back against it. A terrible scream echoed through the wood.
Merit did not dally.
She ran blindly through alleys and streets, not knowing where to go, or even where she was. Among the free companies and outlander clans, few knew her face. They might not recognize her as an ally. She had already once been a prisoner of the sand-dwellers. After that ordeal, she vowed never to let them take her again. Hence, she hurled herself through the crowded streets, stumbling this way and that, but the invaders were everywhere. One by one, they pulled women and children from their homes, looking them up and down. Some were killed right there on the spot, while the richest, the most well-attired, were tied in packs, kept for ransom. Any house servant with a strong back was tied hand and foot, knotted into a gang, to be sold as slaves.
Up close, the outlanders were far fouler than she recalled; they did not even walk like common men. Bow-legged from having spent a lifetime atop a horse, they moved in odd, staggered motions, like some devilish race not meant to tread upon this earth. In the city of light, where every statue was gold and every house was plastered in white, these men wore rags sewn from the skin of rats, their bony limbs looking more skeletal than human. Even their horses were gaunt and malnourished. She’d seen her stable master put down steeds that were healthier than the outlanders’ best mount.
Yet these same men raided the houses and temples of Solus. They took whatever held worth and cast everything else aside. The outlanders pried gems from obelisks and scraped gold from pillars. They wrested pearls from the eyes of great statues and scraped electrum from urns. When the obelisks were small enough and carved from precious stone, they too were carried away, loaded on carts, tossed one on top of the other. The great stone monuments, the ones that were too big to be lifted or carted, were stripped in whatever way was possible. A gilded mask was pried from a funerary placard and the gold was chipped from the stele that ran along the base of some temple. There were great heaps of looted treasure, precious vessels of every sort, wine cups and wine jugs, vessels for mixing or storage. Golden statues lay in great heaps, sacred images of the gods tossed to the stones. In the dust and haze, Merit could not even ascertain which god these men had offended. By the end of the day they’ll have offended all of them a hundred times over, she thought, but these men gave no care. They had their own gods.
The invaders stripped the city bare. Where they could not easily find riches, they took men and women and dragged them from their homes, demanding to know where their gold could be located, insisting that each man produce his every possession for them to paw through and plunder. Men were forced to produce keys and open the sepulchral chambers of their ancestors. The bodies were ripped from their resting places, the desiccated remains torn apart to free a golden bangle or an electrum-studded collar. Each body was given a second death by accident, their souls lost for a bit of metal or a few old gems.
Resistance came seldom, but when it did, the results were disastrous. Merit saw a man flayed before his wife’s eyes. She ran from the sight of it, but she could hardly escape the depredations of the invading army. Bodies littered the streets. Great rolls of fur and fine muslin lay in haphazard stacks. Men tied hand and foot sat alongside sundry casks of oil, wine, and amber. And the parchments that had once filled a hundred repositories lay stripped of the gold rings that bound them, the scrolls tossed to the fire, the gold thrown in sacks. In fact, anything that was not precious was given to the blaze. And after each house was cleared, it, too, was set aflame. Such were the ways of the outlanders. She knew this, had seen it during the wars with the pale-skinned warriors of the west, but was nonetheless shocked by the scale of their plundering and the foulness with which it was executed. Had even Barden anticipated such bedlam, such vulgarity? Perhaps. He was reared among these people.
It took three thousand years to build this city and a day to sack and burn it, she mused. Seeking to avoid the outlanders, she found herself swept up into a crowd of people who were moving away from them. All of Solus had joined her in the streets. Barden’s attack had come so swiftly that no one had had a chance to flee the city in advance of his assault. The gates were barred in the east by Barden’s soldiers and she assumed they were blocked in the north by the Harkans. Only the southern gate was likely open. There were a thousand different posterns and smugglers’ routes that one might use to exit the city, but she knew the location of no such places. In fact, no one in her proximity seemed to know how to get out of the city. The only solution was to run. From the lowest beggars to the highest of the highborn, everyone abandoned their homes or hovels, fleeing the outlanders, trying to find shelter or to hide.
A rooftop overflowing with people collapsed inward, drawing its inhabitants down upon whatever lay below, which happened to be a chamber that was itself overflowing with people. Bodies crashed upon bodies, bloody limbs mingling with broken beams and cracked tiles. No one paused. No one even gave the devastation a moment’s notice or stopped to aid those who had fallen. The crowd surged forward, prodded, perhaps by the destruction, by the desire of each and every citizen to escape whatever death they’d just witnessed. Merit saw the panic in their eyes, the fear mingled with resolve. Half of them already knew the truth: they would die, they’d be burned or bludgeoned. The other half was just too panicked to put it all together, but the realization would come to them soon enough. It came to Merit. She needed to get out of these streets. She had to find Barden or her generals, but she saw little of either. Even the mercenary armies stayed clear of the outlanders. Perhaps they, too, were frightened of the sand-dwellers and had taken their wares and moved on to safer territory. She did her best to push through the crowds, but her progress was slow and Merit was still uncertain of where to go.
Barden could be anywhere. The Harkans were in the north, but who knew how long it would take them to reach this part of the city. They were set to face the Protector’s Army, and that battle might last a day or a month. No one knew or could predict how such a thing might play out.
I can’t count on the Harkan Army to find me, and I can’t rely on Barden either. He rode past my tower. She would have to save herself, and quickly.
A notion formed in her mind. To others, this might have been an obvious idea, but it had taken some time for it to come to the queen of the Harkans. There was one place she could go for protection. The Shroud Wall was tall and impenetrable, and her mother stood behind it, so she made her way toward the white edifice. She might have reached it, but something arrested her flight. A rope fell over her head and tightened around her neck. Her hands were bound with sinew. She was thrown bodily to the ground, tossed in a pile like the rest of the loot. Merit kneeled and out of desperation she lifted her eyes to the Shroud Wall.
Behind a veiled window, someone moved.