Arif knew something had happened, and that something dreadful was going to happen, when all the people ran into the big room where the cage was. They came straight to the cage. The big man opened the door. They all came inside.
Zouki peeked out of the vegetation. He saw the woman. The beautiful woman. He went into a fit of tears. Arif thought he looked puzzled, like he was terrified and did not know why he should be.
The woman pointed. “That one, too.”
Arif wanted to run away. He thought he could get away from them if he got in there with the rock apes. The apes hated the big man... But Zouki was there and something would not let him run. He hesitated a moment too long, anyway. One of the adults was between him and the vegetation, running after Zouki. Then the big man caught him up as he started to run the other way.
Thunder shook the citadel.
“Torgo!” the woman snapped. “Hurry!”
The big man said nothing, just snatched Arif up and set out after the beautiful woman. Behind them, Zouki squealed, caught. The other adults began rounding up the remaining children. The short, wide man yelled at them to hurry.
Aaron had stomach cramps. He had trouble hearing the Herodian sorceress, who had gathered everyone around. As soon as she stopped talking about it they were going to do it. The Dartar boy Yoseh stood to his right, shaking. Reyha pressed against him from the left, strangely calm.
Mo’atabar translated from the Herodian, loosely. “She says that right inside the gateway we should run into a narrow, straight passageway about forty feet long. That’s all she can tell about it from here. She says it should be the hardest part. We get through, the place should be ours. She says get through fast, don’t stop for anything. She has to get in to the anchor for the pattern so she can kill its traps. Questions? No? Then let’s get lined up.”
They would pass through the pattern single file, follow-the-leader, so each man could repeat exactly the steps taken by the man ahead. Traps could be evaded but not disarmed except from within.
The surviving prisoners drew straws. Three would win immediate release. Four would lead the column. The winners cheered and the losers wept. Mo’atabar issued captured Herodian short-swords to the latter.
Aaron eyed the equipment carried by the shock troops. In addition to heavy shields, helmets, armor, javelins, and pikes, many had coils of rope wrapped around them, rope ladders, bundles of javelins and arrows and bows, or stuffed packs on their backs.
The line began moving.
His place was toward the end, behind Yoseh. Only Reyha, Mo’atabar, and the sorceress followed him.
He heard the screaming before he caught sight of the breach. He nearly voided himself. But the line kept moving and he thought of Arif in there and he kept moving, too.
Yoseh wanted to yell at the carpenter to stop stepping on his heels. He was moving as fast as he could. He had to concentrate on what Mahdah was doing so he would not misstep.
Sweat poured out of him, mixed with the sweat of the sky. He’d never been so thoroughly scared. Never before had he been given so much time to work himself into a panic...
He heard the screaming as the entrance wavered into existence, alive with flashes of pink and lemon light. As that dreadful maw welcomed him the momentum of the line faltered, but only for a moment. He skipped over two of the veydeen prisoners, then three of the warriors Fa’tad had sent to lead the attack.
Halfway along the passage there was a small guardroom the sorceress had not mentioned. Two men and a woman lay dead there. Blood covered everything, looking like shiny black paint in the feeble light of a single lamp. One of the men had been disemboweled. Yoseh gagged at the stench.
“Keep moving!” Mo’atabar yelled. “This tunnel is a deathtrap. “
It was. Yoseh stumbled over another five bodies before he reached its end. Three were his own people, one was a prisoner, and one was a woman with a javelin protruding from her back.
The passage ended in a large space divided into stall-like compartments by partitions of rough boards. The pink and yellow lights still played there. A fire burned in a corner. There was a lot of screaming. Dartars chased people through the maze and got caught as often as they caught someone.
“Stop!” Mo’atabar yelled. “Nogah! Get the bodies out of the passage. Find out if any of them are still alive. See if you can find lamps or lanterns or torches.”
“Enemy bodies, too?”
“All of them.”
Nogah assigned Yoseh, Mahdah, Faruk, and two others.
It was not pleasant work, nor was it easy, but it did not take long, either. Yoseh was pleased when he discovered that two of the Dartars were not dead.
Mo’atabar told the surviving prisoner he was free to leave.
The ferrenghi sorceress set up in the guardroom, began disarming the pattern gate.
Mo’atabar tried to convince the carpenter and veydeen woman they should stay with the sorceress. They refused. They wanted to run with the hunters.
Mo’atabar shrugged. “Your lives,” he told them. “Your risk.”
“Our children,” the woman countered. She did not say much.
The look in her eye made Yoseh’s flesh crawl. It was the look he imagined shone in the eyes of cannibals.
The battle of the storeroom ended, a Dartar victory but not cheap. Another five of the shock force had been slain. The losses concerned Mo’atabar though he tried to hide it. “Nogah, you and your bunch collect up the stuff these men were carrying.” Yoseh ended up with a coil of rope, a bow, and arrows. What was he going to do with those?
The fire went out of its own accord. Beyond lay the only apparent exit.
Offered a bow, the carpenter refused. “I’d probably hit myself in the foot. Give me a javelin if I have to take anything.” He accepted a shield, too. He said he had learned to use both in younger days.
The veydeen woman asked for a javelin, too. Handed one, she held it away like it was a poisonous snake.
Mo’atabar herded everyone together near where the fire had died. He said, “I asked the witch what next and she says the next area is kitchens and stuff. Once past those we should be past the worst.”
Nogah muttered, “That’s what you said about the passage coming in.”
Mo’atabar scowled. “Look out for booby traps and ambushes.” He added other cautions.
Yoseh did not listen closely. This was not the Dartar way of war, mounted, sweeping across the desert. This was like fighting through the caverns of the underworld. He stared at the dead defenders. Men and women both, all far too old to fight. Old as Tamisa’s grandmother. He did not like what that implied.
Those ancients had sacrificed themselves. Though their efforts had not been fanatical or terribly courageous. It seemed a desperate attempt to buy time. Which had to mean there was something to buy time for.
Nakar the Abomination.
Yoseh’s fear deepened.
He glanced at the carpenter and felt sorry for the man.
Mo’atabar read the same story from the same signs. He admonished everyone to hurry. “Ready?” Like a good Dartar chieftain he led the charge.
The nothing of the opening hurled him back into the men behind him.
“It’s blocked!” someone yelled.
“But there isn’t anything there!”
Mo’atabar cursed and probed with a javelin snatched from someone’s hand. “Blocked,” he admitted. “Some damned witchery. Break through a wall or something. I’ll drag the ferrenghi witch up here.”
Men dropped their packs, began unlimbering tools.
The Witch paused at the doorway to the place of worship. She told the women who had accompanied her, “Go help Azel. Tell him I will be watching over you. Torgo, you stay with me. Keep control of the children.”
Thunder shook the citadel. Torgo said, “It’s like if they get too close together...”
“Maybe. Zouki, come here.”
The frightened women left. The Witch dragged the boy Zouki through
the doorway. “Close it up, Torgo. I’ll seal it so it can never be opened. The same with the other entrances.”
“But... Azel...”
“He has served his purpose. I have grown tired of him. I am going to let him die a hero’s death defending his lord.” She settled the boy Zouki by the altar, took the other from the eunuch. “Go on, Torgo. Get busy.”
Torgo followed his orders but he was uneasy. He was not a genius and not an astute judge of men but he did feel sure that when Azel died he would not do so for the sake of the High Priest. Azel was a complex man who had concealed himself inside so many masks and lies he did not now know himself but he had given himself away in his conspiratorial whispers. There was one tiny hole in his emotional armor.
Torgo pursed his lips, feelings mixed. Because of that, and so much else, he wished Azel an evil end-but he feared that Azel might be their only hope for salvation.
***
“Here they come!” Azel roared. The stall trick had been good for an hour. He hoped the damned woman hadn’t wasted the time, that she’d laid on a whole troop of tricks and barriers. He shoved his sack of provisions out of the way, let fly with a throwing spear. It stopped the first Dartar dead. “All right! Now! Run them in now.”
The women whipped the terrified children into the battlefield of the kitchens. They did not go far, mostly stood around screaming while the adults pelted the Dartars with missiles from behind them.
The Dartars looked at that mob of brats, for a moment did not know what to do. That cost them. Azel laughed.
Their captain pushed them out behind their shields, formed a miniature turtle, advanced toward the brats. Archers began spraying arrows around. The turtle gobbled half a dozen kids, delivered them to cover behind the bakers’ ovens.
When the turtle advanced again Azel flung a pair of lanterns toward the bowmen. The lanterns smashed. Flames leaped up. While the archers were occupied he grabbed a woman and used her as a shield. He charged into the turtle, laid about him with a meat cleaver, put three of the damned camel lovers down before he ducked back, still laughing.
The violence tore one of his wounds enough that it began to bleed again.
He could have held the bastards there and picked them off as they stampeded around trying to save the brats-if the citadel staff had not gone squeamish about the kids. The women ran off. That left him and two men to hold four exits.
He hurled his cleaver at the Dartar kid who had shown him the Face of Death but the boy moved. Azel grabbed his provisions and fled toward the great chamber where the cage stood. He wished he had a bow. He could give those Dartar bastards fits, sniping from the shadows there.
The staff would retreat from there toward the Witch’s chambers, leading the chase the wrong way, buying more time.
He laughed again.
He had lied to them. He had told them the Witch had fortified her quarters with spells that would keep them safe once they closed the doors behind them. They would flee there thinking they need do nothing but lock up and wait for Nakar.
Hell. Maybe he hadn’t lied. Who knew? The woman might have come to her senses. She’d put out a few other barriers, hadn’t she?
General Cado sighed. The water chute was packed with soldiers. Nothing else but to try it. He gave the order to go.
The first man out was waist-high into the drain when three arrows hit him. He fell back on the men below him.
The Dartar watchers sped a dozen arrows down the drain, began filling it with whatever they found lying around loose.
A third of the way up the hill from the waterfront, in a second-level home in the center of the Shu complex, a woman wholly insignificant otherwise noted a trickle of water running down a wall, starting at eye level. She was baffled. Nothing like that had happened before.
Naszif stopped so violently he slipped on the wet paving stones and fell. Two hundred men surrounded the entrance to the citadel. Qushmarrahans. Armed. He recognized several, including his former commander, Hadribel.
The Living! Out of the shadows now.
They meant to take the citadel from its conquerors as soon as they felt the Dartars had done all the killing for them.
All he could do here was get killed himself. He got his feet under him and took off. The Living noticed him too late to stop him.
22
Aaron looked around frantically, yelled for Arif. Beside him, on her knees, Reyha held a terrified little girl to her breast, rocked and crooned softly, gently tried to quiz the child about Zouki. She got no answers. Ahead, the Dartar boy Yoseh stood in a doorway looking back, hesitant to leave them.
“Arif!”
His son did not answer. He was not here with the others. Zouki was not here.
Fear and horror redoubled. Several children had been hurt in the fighting, despite all efforts to avoid that... The Herodian sorceress jabbered at him and pointed. She wanted him to move along. He determined to stand his ground.
“Aaron.” Yoseh beckoned him. “Come on. The children are not here. The Witch has them.”
“How do you know that?”
“I asked these kids. They told me she came and got them and took them somewhere with her.”
The bottom fell out of Aaron’s stomach. A little hope died.
Yoseh led the way into the largest room he had ever seen, trying to stay alert enough for himself and the carpenter and veydeen woman, too. He had heard of this place. It was as awe-inspiring as the stories said. But there was no time to gawk. It was a madhouse. Rock apes and more children were screeching and running around. Mo’atabar and the others were trying to fight their way up a stairwell off to his left. They were up against another invisible wall. It let missiles come down but would not let them go up. Mo’atabar was ready to tear the place down to get around it.
Then Yoseh glimpsed the child-taker flitting through far shadows. He yelled, sped an arrow, and charged. When he reached the spot he found nothing but a snarling rock ape.
The ferrenghi sorceress shouted a warning that no one but, perhaps, Mo’atabar understood.
Brilliant light. A blow like the sudden impact of a hundred fists...
He did not know how much time had passed. When he came to he found his vision and hearing both impaired. He could barely hear Mo’atabar and the ferrenghi sorceress arguing bitterly at the foot of the stairwell. Mo’atabar wanted to carry the attack upward. The witch wanted to go another direction. She insisted the upward retreat was a diversion. Somehow, she carried her argument-and that left old Mo’atabar looking very frightened.
What now? Yoseh wondered as he staggered to his feet and went to see to the carpenter.
Bel-Sidek stood near the doorway to Meryel’s balcony, listening. Meryel asked, “What in the world are you doing?” She had arrived home and instantly been arrested and put in with him by Zenobel’s men.
“I’m listening for Dartar trumpets.”
“What?”
“Anytime now my self-appointed successor is going to be forced to drink deeply of a dark and bitter wine called Fa’tad al-Akla.”
Azel drifted through dark and silent corridors, cautiously. Had he been anyone else his mood might have been called sad. He hadn’t done nearly as well with the camel jockeys as he’d hoped. Of course, if the woman had bothered to take time to do something besides just throw up a few barriers...
He had given them the slip. They should be headed upward now. That should hold them awhile. Maybe long enough for him to bash a hole through the woman’s obsession and get her to fight. She could’ve cleaned the place out in the time she’d had since the bastards broke in. If she’d bothered to take it. But no. A little paint on the surface, a sop to keep him off her back, maybe, and right back to Nakar.
Damn Nakar... Well, might not be long left in that story. Depended on Torgo. The big idiot was primed. Set to go. If he didn’t fade at the end.
He reached the temple door.
It was closed. For the first time in memory. “What the hell?” He tr
ied it gently. It did not yield. A slight buzzing sensation tickled the tips of his fingers.
For a fraction of a second hurt flickered across his face.
Suspicion became conviction when he tried a side entrance and found it sealed, too. The same tingle teased his sense of touch.
Was he the object of her fortification?
That flicker of hurt came and went.
Maybe there had been some foreshadowing. Maybe he had felt it. Maybe that was why he had prepared the temple.
Or could it just be that Torgo had, at last, managed to get a knife into his back? He turned more grim than ever. The eunuch’s payoff wasn’t far off now. He was tempted not to wait on Nakar.
There were other ways to enter the temple. Ways of which even the High Priest’s woman was unaware.
Azel the Destroyer had not been the messenger of Nakar the Abomination for nothing.
Three minutes later Azel slipped into the sacristy. He placed his provision pack in the hidden room, closed that up again, then crept up behind the image of Gorloch. He settled to watch Torgo and the Witch.
They had the brat whose taking had caused his first encounter with the Dartars tied into a chair. The kid was calm, attentive, almost eager. Azel was troubled. There was something wrong there. The boy seemed old beyond time.
Torgo and the Witch had the other kid strapped down on the altar, damned near in touching distance of Nakar. The kid carried on, screaming, fighting them. The Witch got set to go into her trance. Torgo fluttered around like an old woman, doing three things at once while trying to settle the kid down. Dumb ass. The kid was scared shitless. He wasn’t going to calm down for anything.
Double scared?
Azel eyed the time-locked corpses of Nakar and Ala-eh-din Beyh, the brats, considered events of six years ago as heard secondhand. He considered knowledge picked up at Nakar’s left hand. He hadn’t a whit of that talent himself but he understood theory and mechanics.
Damn! The mad bitch could bring the whole world down around their ears. “Hold it!”