“I'll go,” said Liam, with intensity. “I'll draw their fire.”
“Adele will go,” said Rhillian, nodding to a serrin woman with gleaming, pale hazel eyes. “She sees better. You'll follow. We go rapidly from then. Give them no chance to reload.”
One of the other serrin also had a bow, and took position behind and to one side of Errollyn. Adele whispered some last-minute advice in Liam's ear, hands gesturing the way ahead, then she readied behind Errollyn and the other archer. Both men drew their bows with creaking force. Adele sprinted, a lithe shadow fading into the dark, her soft boots making barely a sound. Sasha held her breath, but no arrowfire came.
Rhillian gestured and Liam set off in pursuit. “Damn, I hate archers,” Sasha muttered to herself. All her training, and she had no defence against archers but to move fast, hide silently and pray. It wasn't fair.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” came Errollyn's voice. Sasha blinked. She hadn't meant that.
Another serrin ran, and still no firing. Sasha peered across the courtyard gloom, seeking the shapes of people. Adele seemed to arrive at the temple, Liam gaining behind. Another signal from Rhillian and Yulia took off running. Two thuds from the Belis wall and a frightening hiss. Yulia fell. Errollyn and his companion fired, and Rhillian sprinted into the courtyard. Sasha watched in horror as Rhillian reached the fallen girl, hauled her to her feet and dragged her stumbling onward. More thuds from the wall, and a clatter of crossbow bolts off pavings as Rhillian threw Yulia flat, falling together.
Another thump from Errollyn's bow, and a scream from the Belis wall. One of the crossbowmen had evidently stuck his head up too high.
“Go!” Sasha told the other serrin bowman. He loosed another arrow and sprinted.
“You next,” said Errollyn, drawing his third arrow and seeking a target. Pitch black, firing at hidden archers at a hundred paces, and Errollyn was actually seeking targets, expecting to hit someone. Just ridiculous.
Sasha checked the narrow road behind them, to be certain there was no one sneaking up. Errollyn fired and cursed in Lenay. Sasha sprinted across the courtyard. Dark shapes along the way were flower gardens, she realised as she ran, every sinew dreading the imminent hiss of arrowfire. A shot came, and she flinched in midsprint, but the hiss-and-clatter fell some distance behind.
Ahead, the temple and its surrounding protection of arches and pillars approached. She heard another two thuds, but again, the bolts were far away. And then she arrived, skidding to a halt behind the pillars. Immediately there were footsteps and then Errollyn arrived. He must have been fast to have nearly overtaken her. She was quick but her legs were not nearly as long.
Against the wall of the temple, Yulia sat. Sasha ran across. “Yulia! Are you hit?”
“She's fine,” said Rhillian.
“I'm sorry,” said Yulia, miserably. “I…I heard the shot and I flinched, and then I tripped up…”
“It's okay,” said Sasha. “I flinched too. We don't have to do that again, do we?”
Rhillian shrugged. “I don't actually go looking for trouble, you know.”
“If you shout loudly enough, and wave your knickers in the air, trouble will find you,” Errollyn remarked. Rhillian gave him an emerald stare that might have pinned a more timid person to the wall.
“You actually missed back there,” Sasha told him, waiting for her heart to slow once more.
“You imagined it,” said Errollyn.
“His second shot did not miss,” said the second serrin bowman, covering the courtyard with his bow from a neighbouring pillar. “He's the only one who actually found the arrowslit.”
Sasha stared at Errollyn. “You shot a man through the arrowslit? I thought he just stood up too high.”
“Those wall posts have roofs,” said Errollyn. “You can't stand up high.”
There were several more serrin already waiting at the temple. One was Terel, tall with red-brown hair and deep bronze eyes. “Nice to see you well,” he said at Sasha's side as they made their careful way around the temple, away from the Belis Mansion.
“And nice to see you,” said Sasha. Like Errollyn and Aisha, Terel had fought with Sasha in Lenayin and she knew him quite well from their time together on the road to Petrodor. Unlike Errollyn and Aisha, Terel was quite the traditional serrin…if “traditional” was any sort of word to apply to a people who did not practise traditions in the sense that most humans meant them. He was formal and reserved, but no less likeable for it. “Been waiting long?”
“One waits,” said Terel, in eloquent Saalsi. “One lives, one ponders, one counts the stars.”
“Quite,” said Sasha, repressing a smile.
There was a passage between the temple and the rectory, and the party slipped down it, gathering again beneath the columns on the temple's far side, directly upon the main ridge road. The ridge road ran along the top of the Petrodor Incline, from one end of the city to the other, connecting the most powerful properties in Petrodor. Here, the opposing walls were high, but without guard posts-only the most powerful families willingly picked fights with the nightwraiths. The nearest off road was to the right, Sasha knew, having come this way a few times before, though never on a night like this.
“Errollyn, Adele, Marlen, Liam, Yulia,” said Rhillian, “you go ahead. I'll guard the rear with Sasha, Vinae, and Terel.” She was more worried about House Belis than whatever lay ahead, Sasha realised.
Errollyn leapt the steps from the temple grounds down to the road and ran softly beside the opposing wall. The others followed, spreading out to avoid giving wall archers an easy shot into a bunch. Vinae-the second archer-watched back toward the Belis Mansion, an arrow at the ready. There would be other serrin in the temple grounds, Sasha knew, invisible in the shadows, or on rooftops, securing these strategic grounds from the families.
There came a noise from the right, the sound of a gate creaking open. Then yells as men poured forth from a property in Errollyn's path, a stream of waving torches and weapons. Rhillian swore. “House Therold,” she muttered. “And so the ground shifts once more.”
Errollyn's bow thrummed. Vinae launched a shot into the dark, then more shots came from temple shadows, and from the roof overhead. Men screamed and swords flashed, a chaos of fighting in the firelight.
“Come on!” Sasha urged, desperate to assist.
Rhillian held up a firm hand. “Wait!” As if expecting something more. From a property much further up the right-hand road, more men with torches came charging. And then, to the left, the Belis gate squealed and ground. “Vinae, we'll take the left,” said Rhillian, as calmly as if she were noting the warm weather. “There's a lane opposite Belis House, we'll never make the right-hand lanes now.”
Sasha saw immediately what Rhillian had in mind. They could not go right, the odds were against it. They had to stop Belis's men from hitting Errollyn's group from behind. May as well go through them.
Men were streaming from the Belis gate, some armed with swords, others with polearms with wicked heads, and a few with axes. The Belis men looked like no family soldiers Sasha had yet seen, with steel helmets and metal breastplates that glinted in the torchlight. Plate armour. Sasha, Rhillian and Terel crouched while Vinae held fire. To the right, Errollyn's group seemed to be winning through.
The Belis soldiers ran past the temple and Rhillian charged. Sasha and Terel followed, and arrowfire tore from the grounds. Six men fell in an instant. Sasha and the others tore into their side, diving into the sudden gaps in their ranks. She slashed low across one pair of legs, parried a blow and removed a head. She was about to parry a new threat, but he fell to Rhillian's flashing blade, and another dropped with an arrow in the throat.
In an instant, a charging formation of twenty-plus men were transformed to a fleeing, shrieking band barely half that number. Rhillian was already charging up the road toward Belis Mansion, from where more men were emerging. Perhaps these had expected to follow behind their braver fellows, or to harass the serrin archers in the temple grounds. Surely they did not expect to see one lone, female serrin come charging at them with blood on her mind.
Rhillian, too, was faster afoot than Sasha, and arrived well ahead. She faked a strike, spun past, and felled one and then another with magnificent precision. Another aimed a halberd for her head, but Rhillian skipped back like a dancer, killed his companion who tried to outflank her, deflected a stab for her middle with a downward, vertical blade which miraculously changed to a horizontal, upward cut with a twist of wrists and elbows. The halberd-wielder fell, gushing blood from the throat.
Four dead before Sasha and Terel even arrived, the men from House Belis did not know what hit them. Sasha cut through one and found the others already scattering, those on the periphery falling as serrin arrows found them. Rhillian was already running to a dark gap in the walls opposite the corner of the Belis Mansion. Atop the mansion walls, Sasha caught a glimpse of activity within the guardpost arrowslit, confused crossbowmen not knowing who to shoot in the melee. She dived through the gap as Rhillian waited behind for Terel and Vinae.
There were steps in the narrow alley, leading downward, and Sasha risked her poor human eyesight, hoping to secure some distance for those behind to follow. She found a corner where a second alley ran off to the right and the slope dropped sharply. Above the next house, there was suddenly a view of the harbour well below, agleam with the last light of a half moon upon the horizon. Little ships, in silhouette against that silver light. Now, they just had to survive the descent.
Soft footsteps behind, above the ongoing yells and screams of men on the ridge road above. Terel emerged on the stairs, half carrying Vinae who seemed to have caught a crossbow bolt in the shoulder. Damn. Rhillian came past at speed, feet flying on the steps as Sasha would never have dared in the dark. She took the lead and Sasha fell behind, guarding the rear from any pursuit. It seemed unlikely. An open road was one thing, but an alley in the dark meant single combat with serrin for whom the night was as bright as any day.
They continued down the steps for a fair time, slowed by Vinae's injury. Rhillian took twists and forks with what Sasha presumed (or hoped) was local knowledge, occasionally turning back uphill, or over a short rise of stairs. Many times they passed rear gates in the walls and Sasha suffered bad memories of Riverside, spears and clubs lashing at her from unexpected dark corners. One time Rhillian actually missed a tripwire and triggered a nearby bell, which set a dog barking madly behind its wall. Rhillian seemed not to care, but Sasha could not escape the feeling of unseen eyes upon her back, aiming crossbow bolts in the dark.
Finally Rhillian paused atop some steps where a big tree grew against one wall, spreading thick roots through the surrounding stone. Terel helped Vinae to rest against the tree and tended to his injury. The bolt had struck him from behind, lodging through one shoulder blade. Terel took a knife to his clothes and began to relate his findings to Vinae in some Saalsi dialect Sasha could make no sense from at all. Vinae seemed somewhat reassured, pale and gasping, but alert.
“Those didn't look like family soldiers,” Sasha murmured to Rhillian as both of them crouched atop the uneven stone stairs. “All that clumsy armour, and silly weapons for city fighting. Halberds.”
“They were men of Danor Province,” said Rhillian. She seemed barely even out of breath, her green eyes sharp and calm, cutting through the dark. “That fool Duke Tarabai has been itching to have at us within the city for a while now. He disdained Patachi Steiner's warnings. Now he learns the patachi's wisdom.”
Sasha raised an eyebrow at her. “That's the only nice thing you've ever said about Patachi Steiner.”
“Nice? The wise are rarely nice, in this city. Petrodor wisdom is the mother of Petrodor brutality and intelligence its father. These terms are strange to serrin philosophy. No, I'm sure Patachi Steiner was pleased to set traps along the ridgetop after Riverside, and in light of the increased Nasi-Keth and serrin activity. But I don't think he'll shed tears for his upstart duke to learn his place, either.”
“I'm sure he'd rather have killed us all even more,” Sasha remarked.
Rhillian shrugged. “Tian'as fahr.” One could have said, “that meant, if one could know everything.” “Although captured for torture might be even more preferable to him.”