“Severed artery,” I said. “That’s tricky.” My ears hummed. The world began to turn slowly, getting cold. Shock. How much blood did I lose? The captain had moved fast enough. Plenty of time. If the healer was not some butcher....”
The captain grabbed a corporal. “Go find out what happened down there. Don’t take any bullshit answers.”
The litter came. They lifted me in, hoisted me, and I passed out. I wakened in a small surgery, tended by a man who was as much sorcerer as surgeon. “Better job than I could have done,” I told him when he finished.
“Any pain?”
“Nope.”
“Going to ache like hell in a while.”
“I know.” How many times had I said the same?
The Guard captain came. “Going all right?”
“Done,” the surgeon replied. To me, “No work. No activity. No sex. You know the drill.”
“I do. Sling?”
He nodded. “We’ll bind your arm to your side, too, for a few days.”
The captain was antsy. “Find out what happened?” I asked.
“Not really. The ballista crew couldn’t explain. It just got away from them somehow. Maybe you got lucky.” He recalled me saying somebody was trying to kill me.
I touched the amulet Goblin had given me. “Maybe.”
“Hate to do it,” he said. “But I’ve got to take you for your interview.”
Fear. “What about?”
“You’d know better than I.”
“But I don’t.” I had a remote suspicion, but had forced that out of mind.
There seemed to be two Towers, one sheathing the other. The outer was the seat of Empire, manned by the Lady’s functionaries. The inner, as intimidating to them as was the whole to us outside, took up a third of the volume and could be entered at only one point. Few ever did so.
The entrance was open when we reached it. There were no guards. I suppose none were needed. I should have been more scared, but was too dopey. The captain said, “I’ll wait here.” He had placed me in a wheeled chair, which he rolled through the doorway. I went in with my eyes sealed and heart hammering.
The door chunked shut. The chair rolled a long way, making several turns. I don’t know what impelled it. I refused to look. Then it stopped moving. I waited. Nothing happened. Curiosity got the best of me. I blinked.
She stands in the Tower, gazing northward. Her delicate hands are clasped before Her. A breeze steals softly through Her window. It stirs the midnight silk of Her hair. Tear diamonds sparkle on the gentle curve of Her cheek.
My own words, written more than a year before, came back. It was that scene, from that romance, to the least detail. To detail I had imagined but never written. As if that fantasy instant had been ripped from my brain whole and given the breath of life.
I did not believe it for a second, of course. I was in the bowels of the Tower. There were no windows in that grim structure.
She turned. And I saw what every man sees in dreams. Perfection. She did not have to speak for me to know her voice, her speech rhythms, the breathiness between phrases. She did not have to move for me to know her mannerisms, the way she walked, the odd way she would lift her hand to her throat when she laughed. I had known her since adolescence.
In seconds I understood what the old stories meant about her overwhelming presence. The Dominator himself must have swayed in her hot wind.
She rocked me, but did not sweep me away. Though half of me hungered, the remainder recalled my year around Goblin and One-Eye. Where there is sorcery nothing is what it seems. Nice, yes, but sugar candy.
She studied me as intently as I studied her. Finally, “We meet again,” The voice was everything I expected and more. It had humor, too.
“Indeed,” I croaked.
“You’re frightened.”
“Of course I am.” Maybe a fool would have denied it. Maybe.
“You were injured.” She drifted closer. I nodded, my heartbeat increasing. “I wouldn’t subject you to this if it wasn’t important.”.
I nodded again, too shaky to speak, totally baffled. This was the Lady, the villain of the ages, the Shadow animate This was the black widow at the heart of darkness’ web, a demi-goddess of evil. What could be important enough for her to take note of the likes of me?
Again, I did have suspicions I would not admit to myself. My moments of critical congress with anyone important were not numerous.
“Someone tried to kill you. Who?”
“I don’t know.” Taken on the wind. Lime thread.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know. Even if you think you don’t.” Flint razored through that perfect voice.
I had come expecting the worst, had been taken in by the dream, had let my defenses fall.
The air hummed. A lemon glow formed above her. She moved closer, becoming hazy-except for that face and that yellow. That face expanded, vast, intense, swooping closer. Yellow filled the universe. I saw nothing but the eye....
The Eye! I remembered the Eye in the Forest of Cloud. I tried to throw my arm across my face. I could not move. I think I screamed. Hell. I know I screamed.
There were questions I did not hear. Answers spooled across my mind, in rainbows of thought, like oil droplets spreading on still, crystal water. I had no more secrets.
No secrets. No thought I’d ever had was hidden.
Terror writhed in me like snakes afraid. I had written those silly romances, true, but I also had my doubts and disgusts. A villain as black as she would destroy me for having seditious thoughts....
Wrong. She was secure in the strength of her wickedness. She did not need to quash the questions and doubts and fears of her minions. She could laugh at our consciences and moralities.
This was no repeat of our encounter in the forest. I did not lose my memories. I just did not hear her questions. Those could be inferred from my answers about my contacts with the Taken.
She was hunting the something I began to suspect at the Stair of Tear. I had stumbled into as deadly a trap as ever snapped shut; Taken as the one jaw, the Lady as the other.
Darkness. And awakening.
She stands in the Tower, gazing northward.... Tear diamonds sparkle on Her cheek.
A spark of Croaker remained unintimidated. “This is where I came in,”
She faced me, smiled. She stepped over and touched me with the sweetest fingers ever woman possessed.
All fear went away.
All darkness closed in again.
Passageway walls were rolling by when I recovered. The Guard captain was pushing me. “How are you doing?” he asked.
I took stock. “Good enough. Where you taking me now?”
“The front door. She said cut you loose.”
Just like that? Hmm. I touched my wound. Healed. I shook my head. Things like this did not happen to me.
I paused at the place where the ballista had had its mishap. There was nothing to see and no one to question. I descended to the middle level and visited one of the crews excavating there. They had orders to install a cubicle twelve feet wide and eighteen deep. They had no idea why.
I scanned the length of the retaining wall. A dozen such sites were under construction.
The men eyed me intently when I limped into camp. They choked on questions they could not ask, on concern they could not express. Only Darling refused to play the traditional game. She squeezed my hand, gave me a big smile. Her little fingers danced.
She asked the questions machismo forbid the men. “Slow down,” I told her. I was not yet proficient enough to catch everything she signed. Yet her joy communicated itself. I had a big grin on when I became aware that someone was in my way. I looked up. Raven.
“Captain wants you,” he said, He seemed cool.
“Figures.” I signed good-bye, strolled toward headquarters. I felt no urgency. No mere mortal could intimidate me now.
I glanced back. Raven had his arm across Dar
ling’s shoulder, proprietary, looking puzzled.
The Captain was off his style. He dispensed with the customary growling. One-Eye was the only third party present, and he, too, was interested in nothing but business.
“We got trouble?” the Captain asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What happened in the hills. No accident, eh? The Lady summons you, and half an hour later one of the Taken goes zuzu. Then there’s your accident at the Tower. You’re bad hurt and nobody can explain.”
One-Eye observed, “Logic insists a connection.”
The Captain added, “Yesterday we heard you were dying. Today you’re fine. Sorcery?”
“Yesterday?” Time had gotten away again. I pushed the tent flap aside, stared at the Tower. “Another night in elf hill.”
“Was it an accident?” One-Eye asked.
“It wasn’t accidental.” The Lady hadn’t thought so.
“Captain, that jibes.”
The Captain said”, “Somebody tried to knife Raven last night. Darling ran him off.”
“Raven? Darling?”
“Something woke her up. She whacked the guy in the head with her doll. Whoever it was got away.”
“Weird.”
“Decidedly,” One-Eye said. “Why would Raven sleep through and a deaf kid wake up? Raven can hear the footfall of a gnat. Smells of sorcery. Cockeyed sorcery. The kid shouldn’t have awakened.”
The Captain jumped in. “Raven. You. Taken. The Lady. Murder attempts. An interview in the Tower. You have the answer. Spill it.”
My reluctance showed.
“You told Elmo we should disassociate ourselves from Catcher. How come? Catcher treats us good. What happened when you took out Harden? Spread it around and there wouldn’t be any point to killing you.”
Good argument. Only I like to be sure before I shoot my mouth off. “I think there’s a plot against the Lady. Soulcatcher and Stormbringer might be involved.” I related details of Harden’s fall and Whisper’s taking. “Shifter was really upset because they let the Hanged Man die. I don’t think the Limper was part of anything. He was set up, and manipulated craftily. The Lady was too. Maybe the Limper and the Hanged Man were her supporters.”
One-Eye looked thoughtful. “You sure Catcher is in on it?”
“I’m not sure of anything. I wouldn’t be surprised by anything, either. Ever since Beryl I’ve thought he was using us.”
The Captain nodded. “Definitely. I told One-Eye to cook up an amulet that’ll warn you if one of the Taken gets too close. For what good it’ll do. I don’t think you’ll be bothered again, though. The Rebel is on the move. That’ll be everybody’s first order of business.”
A chain of logic lightninged to a conclusion. The data was there all the time. It just needed a nudge to drop into place. “I think I know what it’s about. The Lady being an usurper.”
One-Eye asked, “One of the boys in the masks wants to do her the way she done her old man?”
“No. They want to bring back the Dominator.”
“Eh?”
“He’s still up north, in the ground. The Lady just kept him from returning when the wizard Bomanz opened the way for her. He could be in touch with Taken who are faithful to him. Bomanz proved communication with those buried in the Barrowland was possible. He could even be guiding some of the Circle, Harden was as big a villain as any of the Taken.”
One-Eye pondered, then prophesied. “The battle will be lost. The Lady will be overthrown. Her loyal Taken will be laid low and her loyal troops wiped out. But they will take the most idealistic elements among the Rebel with them, meaning, essentially, a defeat for the White Rose.”
I nodded. “The comet is in the sky, but the Rebel hasn’t found his mystic child.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right on the mark when you say maybe the Dominator is influencing the Circle. Yeah.”
“And in the chaos afterward, while they’re squabbling over the spoils, up jumps the devil,” I said.
“So where do we fit?” the Captain asked.
“The question,” I replied, “is how do we get out from under.”
Flying carpets buzzed around the Tower like flies around a corpse. The armies of Whisper, the Howler, the Nameless, Bonegnasher, and Moonbiter, were eight to twelve days away, converging. Eastern troops were pouring in by air.
The gate in the palisade was busy with the comings and goings of parties harassing the Rebel. The Rebel had moved his camps to within five miles of the Tower. Some company troops made the occasional night raid, abetted by Goblin, One-Eye, and Silent, but the effort seemed pointless. The numbers were too overwhelming for hit and run to have any substantial effect. I wondered why the Lady wanted the Rebel kept stirred up.
Construction was complete. The obstacles were prepared. Boobytraps were in place. There was little to do but wait.
Six days had passed since our return with Feather and Journey. I’d expected their capture to electrify the Rebel into striking, but still they were stalling. One-Eye believed they had hopes of a last-minute finding of their White Rose.
Only the drawing of lots remained undone. Three of the Taken, with armies assigned them, would defend each level. It was rumored that the Lady herself would command forces stationed on the pyramid.
Nobody wanted to be on the front line. No matter how things went, those troops would be badly hurt. Thus the lottery.
There had been no more attempts on Raven or myself. Our antagonist was covering his tracks some other way. Too late to do unto us, anyway. I’d seen the Lady.
The tenor changed. Returning skirmishers began to look more battered, more desperate. The enemy was moving his camps again.
A messenger reached the Captain. He assembled the officers. “It’s begun. The Lady has called the Taken to the lottery.” He wore an odd expression. The main ingredient was astonishment. “We have special orders. From the Lady herself!”
Whisper-murmur-rastle-grumble, everyone shaken. She was giving us all the rough jobs. I envisioned having to anchor the first line against Rebel elite troops.
“We’re to strike camp and assemble on the pyramid.” A hundred questions buzzed like hornets. He said, “She wants us for bodyguards.”
“The Guard won’t like that,” I said. They did not like us anyway, having had to submit to the Captain’s orders at the Stair of Tear.
“Think they’ll give her a hard way to go, Croaker? Gents, the boss says go. So we go. You want to talk about it, do it while you’re breaking camp. Without the men hearing.”
For the troops this was great news. Not only would we be behind the worst fighting, we would be in a position to fall back into the Tower.
Was I that sure we were doomed? Did my negativism mirror a general attitude? Was this an army defeated before the first blow?
The comet was in the sky.
Considering that phenomenon while we moved, amidst animals being driven into the Tower, I understood why the Rebel had stalled. They had hoped to find their White Rose at the last minute, of course. And they had been waiting for the comet to attain a more auspicious aspect, its closest approach.
I grumbled to myself.
Raven, trudging beside me burdened with his own gear and a bundle belonging to Darling, grunted, “Huh?”
“They haven’t found their magic kid. They won’t have everything going their way.”
He looked at me oddly, almost suspiciously. Then, “Yet,” he said. “Yet.”
There was a big clamor as Rebel cavalry hurled javelins at sentinels on the palisade. Raven did not look back. It was just a probe.
We had a hell of a view from the pyramid, though it was crowded up there. “Hope we’re not stuck here long, I said. And, “Going to be hell treating casualties.”
The Rebel had moved his camps to within a half mile of the stockade. They blended into one. There was constant/skirmishing at the palisade. Most of our troops had taken their places on the tiers.
The first lev
el forces consisted of those who had served in the north, fleshed out by garrison troops from cities abandoned to the Rebel. There were nine thousand of them, divided into three divisions. The center had been assigned to Stormbringer. Had I been running things, she would have been on the pyramid hurling cyclones.
The wings were commanded by Moonbiter and Bonegnasher, two Taken I’d never encountered.
Six thousand men occupied the second level, also divided into three divisions. Most were archers from the eastern armies. They were tough, and far less uncertain than the men below them. Their commanders, from left to right, were: The Faceless or Nameless Man, The Howler, and Nightcrawler. Countless racks of arrows had been provided them. I wondered how they would manage if the enemy broke the first line.
The third tier was manned by the Guard at the ballistae, Whisper on the left with fifteen hundred veterans from her own eastern army, and Shifter on the right with a thousand westerners and southerners. In the middle, below the pyramid, Soulcatcher commanded the Guard and allies from the Jewel Cities. His troops numbered twenty-five hundred.
And on the pyramid was the Black Company, one thousand strong, with banners bright and standards bold and weapons ready to hand.
So. Roughly twenty-one thousand men, against more man ten times that number. Numbers aren’t always critical. The Annals recall many moments when the Company beat the odds. But not like this. This was too static. There was no room for retreat, for maneuver, and an advance was out of the question.
The Rebel got serious. The palisade’s defenders withdrew quickly, dismantling the spans across the three trenches. The Rebel did not pursue. Instead, he began demolishing the stockade.
“They look as methodical as the Lady,” I told Elmo.
“Yep. They’ll use the timber to bridge the trenches.”
He was wrong, but we would not learn that immediately.
“Seven days till the eastern armies get here,” I muttered at sunset, glancing back at the huge, dark bulk of the Tower. The Lady had not come forth for the initial scrimmage.
“More like nine or ten,” Elmo countered. “They’ll want to get here all together.”
“Yeah. Should’ve thought of that.”
We ate dried food and slept on the earth. And in the morning we rose to the bray of Rebel trumpets.