Blinking as he dried himself off, Martin said, ‘I must be.’ He fixed her with a black look, then found his anger slip away as he regarded her smiling face. After a moment he smiled in return. ‘Out in the woods I’m a light sleeper. Indoors I relax.’
She knelt upon the bed and kissed him. She was dressed in tunic and trousers. ‘I must ride out to one of our steadings. Care to come? It is only for the day.’
Martin grinned. ‘Certainly.’
She kissed him again. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’ he asked, clearly confused.
‘For staying here with me.’
Martin stared at her. ‘You’re thanking me?’
‘Of course, I asked you.’
‘You are of a strange people, Bree. Most men I know would happily slit my throat to have had my place here last night.’
She turned her head slightly, a puzzled look on her face. ‘Truly? How odd. I could say the same about most of the women here and you, Martin. Though no one would fight over something like bed rights. You are free to choose your partners, and they are free to answer yes or no. That is why I thanked you, for saying yes.’
Martin grabbed her and kissed her, half-roughly. ‘In my land we do things differently.’ He let her go, suddenly concerned he had been too rough. She seemed a little uncertain but not frightened. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that … it was not a favour, Bree.’
She leaned close and rested her head upon his shoulder. ‘You speak of something beyond the comforts of the bedchamber.’
‘Yes.’
She was silent for a long time. ‘Martin, here in Armengar, we know the wisdom of not planning too far into the future.’ There was a catch in her speech and her eyes gleamed. ‘My mother was to have wed the Protector. My father has been dead eleven years. It would have been a joyous union.’ Martin could see the wetness spreading down her cheeks. ‘Once I was betrothed. He rode to answer a goblin raid on a kraal. He never returned.’ She studied his face. ‘We do not lightly make promises. A night shared is not a vow.’
‘I am not a frivolous man.’
She studied his face. ‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘And I am not a frivolous woman. I choose partners carefully. There is something here building quickly between us, Martin. I know that. It will … come to us as time and circumstances permit, and to worry what the outcome of these things will be is wasted effort.’ She bit her lower lip as she struggled for her next words. ‘I am a commander, privy to knowledge most in the city are ignorant of. For the moment I can only ask you not to expect more than I can freely give.’ Seeing his mood darken, she smiled and kissed him. ‘Come, let us ride.’
Martin quickly dressed, uncertain of what had been accomplished, but certain it had been important. He felt both relieved and troubled: relieved he had stated his feelings, then troubled he had not done so clearly and her answer had been clouded. Still, he had been reared by elves, and as Briana had said, things would come to pass in their own good time.
Arutha finished recounting the previous night’s conversation to Laurie, Baru, and Roald. The boys had been gone for a day. Martin had not returned to their quarters, and Arutha thought he knew where he had spent the night.
Laurie thought long on what Arutha had said. ‘So the population is falling.’
‘Or so Guy says.’
‘He’s right,’ said a voice from the door.
They looked and discovered Jimmy and Locklear standing there, each with his arm about the waist of a pretty girl. Locklear appeared unable to keep his face in repose. No matter how hard he tried, his mouth seemed determined to set itself in a grin.
Jimmy introduced Krinsta and Bronwynn, then said, ‘The girls showed us the city. Arutha, there are entire sections standing empty, home after home with no one living there.’ Jimmy looked about and, discovering a plate of fruit, attacked a pear. ‘I guess upward of twenty thousand people lived here once. Now I guess less than half of that.’
‘I’ve already agreed in principle to help Armengar, but the problem is getting messages back to Yabon. It seems Murmandamus may be lax in letting people in, but he’s rigorous in seeing no one gets out.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Roald. ‘Most of those coming north are heading for his camp anyway. So what if a few blunder into this city and help. He’s massing his army and can probably drive past here if he chooses.’
Baru said, ‘I think I can get through, if I go alone.’ Arutha looked interested and Baru said, ‘I am a hillman, and while these people are kin they are also city people. Only those in the few high steadings and kraals might have my skill. Moving at night, hiding during the day, I should be able to cross over into the Yabon Hills. Once there, no moredhel or goblin would be able to keep pace with me.’
‘Getting into the Yabon Hills would be the problem,’ said Laurie. ‘Remember how those trolls had chased that Beasthunter for what, days? I don’t know.’
‘I’ll think on it, Baru,’ said Arutha. ‘It may be that desperate gamble is all we have, but perhaps there’s another way. We might mount a raiding party to get someone up to the crest, then turn and fight our way back, giving whoever goes south as much of a head start as possible. It may not be possible, but I’ll discuss it with Guy. If we can’t discover another choice, I’ll permit you to try. Though I don’t think alone is necessarily the best. We managed all right in a small company getting in and out of Moraelin.’ He rose. ‘If any of you can conceive a better plan, I’ll welcome it. I am going to join Guy in inspecting the battlements. If we’re stuck here when the assault comes, we might as well lend all the aid we may.’ He left the room.
Guy’s hair blew wildly as they looked out over the plain beyond the city. ‘I’ve inspected every inch of this wall, and I still don’t believe the quality of engineering.’
Arutha could only agree. The stones used had been cut to a precision undreamed of by the Masterbuilders and stonemasons of the Kingdom. Running his hand over a joint, he could barely feel where one stone ended and another began. ‘It is a wall that might have defied Segersen’s engineers had they come.’
‘We had some good engineers in our armies, Arutha. I can’t see how this wall could be brought down short of a miracle.’ He took out his sword and struck hard enough to make the blade ring, then pointed to the merlon where he had struck. Arutha inspected the place and saw only a slight lighter-colour scratch. ‘It seems a blue granite, like ironstone, but even harder. It’s a stone common enough to these mountains, but harder to work than anything I’ve seen. How it was worked is unknown. And the footings below the plinth are twenty feet into the earth, thirty feet from front to back. I can’t even guess how the blocks were moved from the quarries in the mountains. If you could tunnel under it, the best that might happen is the entire wall section might sink down and crush you. And you can’t even do that, because the wall sits atop bedrock.’
Arutha leaned back against the wall, looking at the city and the citadel beyond. ‘This is easily the most defensible city I have ever heard of. You should be able to handle up to twenty-to-one odds.’
‘Ten-to-one’s the conventional figure for overrunning a castle, but I’m inclined to agree. Except for one thing: Murmandamus’s damn magic. He may not be able to bring these walls down, but I’ll warrant he’s got a means to get past them. Somehow. Else he wouldn’t be coming.’
‘You’re certain? Why not bottle you up with a small harrying force and move his army south?’
‘He can’t leave us at his back. He had his way with us for a year before I took command, and could have bled us to death by now if I hadn’t changed the rules of the game. Over the last two years I’ve taught our soldiers everything I know. With Armand and Amos helping them learn, they now have the advantages of modern warcraft. No, Murmandamus knows he has an army of seven thousand Armengarians ready to jump on his rear if he turns his back. He can’t leave us behind his lines. We’d hamstring him.’
‘So he must rid himself of you first, then turn to the Ki
ngdom.’
‘Yes. And he must do it soon, or he loses another season. It turns to winter quickly up here. We see snow weeks before the Kingdom. The passes become blocked in days, sometimes in only hours. Once he has moved south, he must be victorious, for he cannot move his army north again until spring. He is on a timetable. He must come within the next two weeks.’
‘So we must get word out soon.’
Guy nodded. ‘Come, let me show you some more.’
Arutha followed the man, feeling a strange sense of divided loyalties. He knew he must help the Armengarians, but he still was not comfortable with Guy. Arutha had come to understand why Guy had done what he did, and in a strange way he even grudgingly admired him, but he didn’t like him. And he knew why he didn’t like him: Guy had made him see a similarity of nature common to them, a willingness to do what must be done regardless of cost. So far, Arutha had never gone to the lengths Guy had, but he now understood he might have acted in much the same way had he been in Guy’s place. It was a discovery about himself he didn’t particularly like.
They moved through the city, and Arutha asked about those details observed when they had first entered Armengar. ‘Yes,’ said Guy. ‘There are no clear lines of fire, so that every turn can hide an ambush. I’ve a city map in the citadel, and the city is as it is by design rather than chance. Once you see the pattern, it’s easy to know which directions to choose to reach any given point in the city, but without knowing what the pattern is, it’s easy to get turned about, to be led back toward the outer wall.’ He pointed at a building. ‘Every house lacks windows on the street, and every roof is an archery platform. This city was built to cost any attackers dearly.’
Soon they were inside the citadel, and saw the boys coming across the courtyard. ‘Where are the girls?’ Arutha asked.
Locklear looked disappointed. ‘They had to go do some things before they reported back for duty.’
Guy studied the two squires. ‘Well then, come with us if you’ve nothing better to do.’
They followed Guy into the first floor and down to the lift. Guy rang the bell, giving the code to raise them to the highest roof. Reaching it, they looked down upon the city and plain beyond. ‘Armengar.’ His hand swept across the horizon. ‘There,’ he pointed, ‘is the Plain of Isbandia, cut across by the Vale of Isbandia, the limit of our holdings to the north and northwest. The plain beyond that is Murmandamus’s. To the east, the Edder Forest, almost as vast as the Blackwood or the Green Heart. We don’t know much about it, save we can safely lumber at the edges. Anyone who goes more than a few miles deep tends not to be seen again.’ He pointed to the north. ‘Beyond the vale is Sar-Sargoth. If you’re especially bold, you can climb the hills at the north edge of the vale and look across the plain to see the lights of this city’s twin.’
Jimmy studied the war engines upon the roof. ‘I don’t know a lot about this, but can those catapults shoot beyond the outer wall?’
‘No,’ was all Guy said. ‘Come along.’
They all moved back to the lift and Guy pulled the cord. Arutha noticed there was some code to indicate up or down, and, he supposed, the number of floors.
They descended to the ground floor, then lower yet. They reached a subbasement, several levels below the ground, and Guy led them from the platform. They passed a giant winch arrangement with a team of four horses hitched to a large wheel, which Arutha supposed was the power source for the lift. It certainly looked impressive, with large tongue and grooved wheels, and strange multiple rope and pulley arrangements. But Guy ignored the horse team and drivers, walking past them. He pointed at a large door, barred from the inside. ‘That’s the bolt hole out of here. We keep it sealed, for by some fluke or other, when the door’s open a constant breeze blows through here, something to be avoided.’ Opposite the large door stood another, which he opened, leading them into a natural tunnel. He took a strange-looking lantern from beside the door, one that glowed with a lower level of light than expected. Guy said, ‘This thing uses some sort of alchemy to give off light. I don’t understand it fully, but it works. We risk no flames here. You’ll see why.’
Jimmy had been examining the walls and pulled off a white, flaky wax substance. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger and sniffed. ‘I understand,’ he said, making a face. ‘Naphtha.’
‘Yes.’ Guy looked at Arutha. ‘He’s a sharp one.’
‘So he’s quick to remind me. How did you know?’
‘Remember at the bridge south of Sarth, last year? The one I fired to keep Murad and the Black Slayers from crossing? That’s what I used, distillation of naphtha.’
‘Come,’ said Guy taking them through another door.
The reek of tar assailed their noses as they entered the chamber. Strange-looking, large buckets were hung from chains. A dozen shirtless men laboured to manoeuvre the buckets down into a huge pool of black liquid. The odd lanterns burned about the cavern, but mostly the place was shrouded in darkness. ‘We’ve tunnels honeycombing this entire mountain, and this stuff is found in all of them. There’s some natural source of naphtha below and it constantly bubbles to the surface. We must keep taking it off, or it seeps upward into the basements of the city, through cracks in the bedrock. If work was halted, the stuff would be pooling in the cellars of the city within a few days. But as the Armengarians have been doing this for years, it’s under control.’
I can see why you don’t want to risk a fire,’ said Locklear, in open wonder.
‘Fires we can handle. We’ve had dozens, as recently as last year, briefly. What we’ve discovered, or rather what the Armengarians have discovered, is some uses for this stuff we don’t have in the Kingdom.’ He motioned them into another chamber, where odd looking coils of tubing ran between vats. ‘Here we do the distillation, and some of the other mixing. I understand a tenth of it, but the alchemists can explain. They make all manner of things from this naphtha, even some odd salves that keep wounds from festering, but one thing they’ve found is the secret of making Quegan fire.’
‘Quegan fire!’ Arutha exclaimed.
‘They don’t call it that, but it’s the same stuff. The walls are limestone, and it’s limestone dust that turns naphtha into Quegan fire oil. Fling it from a catapult and it burns and even water won’t put it out. That’s why we have to be so careful, for it doesn’t just burn.’ He looked at Locklear. ‘The fumes are heavy, hugging the ground, but if you let the fumes build up, vent them with a lot of air, then hit a spark, the fumes explode.’ He pointed toward a far cavern, loaded up with wooden barrels. ‘That storage cave wasn’t there ten years ago. When a barrel is emptied, it is filled again, or put under water until used. Some dolt left three empties standing about and somehow a spark hit one and … Just the amount of that stuff which soaks into the wood, then evaporates, can give off a tremendous explosion. That’s why we keep the doors closed. The breeze off the mountains through the bolt hole can vent this entire complex in a day or two. And if all this went up at once…’ He let their imaginations provide the picture. ‘I’ve had the Armengarians making this for two years now, to give Murmandamus a warm welcome when he comes.’
‘How many barrels?’ asked Arutha.
‘Over twenty five thousand.’
Arutha was staggered. When he had met Amos, the pirate had had two hundred barrels in the hold of his ship, a fact not known to the Tsurani raiders who had set fire to his ship. When it had gone up, it had blown a column of flames hundreds of feet into the air, engulfing the ship in an instant, incinerating it within minutes. The light of the flames had been seen for miles up and down the coast. If half the town hadn’t already been burned by Tsurani raiders the fire would have devastated Crydee. ‘That’s enough…’
‘To fire the entire city,’ finished Guy.
‘Why so much?’ asked Jimmy.
‘Something you must understand, all of you. The Armengarians have never thought of leaving here. In their judgment, there’s no other place to find refuge.
They came north to flee the Kingdom, so they thought they couldn’t return south. On every side they saw enemies. Should the worst occur, they’ll fire this city rather than let Murmandamus capture it. I’ve developed a plan beyond that, but in either case, a lot of fire could prove useful.’ He returned toward the tunnel leading to the lift, the others following behind.
Martin sat resting against a tree. He kissed Briana’s hair as she sank deeper into his arms. She stared off into some unseen place. Before them a small brook wound its way through a stand of woods, shrouding them in soft, cool shadows. Her patrol had broken for a noontime meal, which was being provided by the local farmers. She and Martin had stolen away to spend the time alone. The woodland setting put Martin more at ease than he had been in months, but still he was troubled. They had made love under the trees and now were simply finding pleasure in each other’s company, but Martin still felt a lack inside. In her ear he said, ‘Bree, I wish this could go on forever.’
She sighed and wiggled a little. ‘I also, Martin. You are such a man as … another I knew. I think I could not wish for more.’
‘When this is finished –’
She cut him off. ‘When this is finished. Then we can talk of things. Come, we must get back.’ She dressed quickly, Martin openly admiring her. She had none of the frail beauty of the women he had known at home. There was leather toughness to her makeup, tempered by a deep feminine quality. She was not a pretty woman by any standards, but she was striking and, with those arresting qualities of self-confidence and self-reliance Martin saw in her, she was stunning, even beautiful. In all ways, he had become captivated by her.
He finished dressing and before she could move away reached out and took her by the arm, turning her and bringing her to him. With a deep passion he kissed her, then said, ‘I need not speak, but you know my need and my desire. I have waited for you too long.’
She looked up into his dark eyes. She reached up and touched his face. ‘And I you.’ She kissed him gently. ‘We must return.’