She made her way back toward the Giana Family's residence, where Elra rested by the little courtyard. She'd barely gone ten steps when she saw one of the Giana daughters pointing her out to a tall man. He had long black hair, a bushy moustache and familiar-looking tattoos curling across his forehead. He wore a big sword at his hip, with a plain pommel and leather binding-big and brutal, with none of the decoration and lightness Gregan and his peers had preferred. Worst of all, he was now striding her way with something approaching glee in his eyes.
No…not worst of all. There was a small crowd following him, and Alythia realised in shock that they all seemed to be of a kind with the big, heathen man. For surely heathen he was, the tattoos gave him away, to say nothing of the sword and long hair. Highlanders, like herself. The sort of men whose company good, high born Verenthane women were supposed to avoid. There were perhaps fifty in all, and even strong Dockside men gave a wary sideways step to let them pass, for they looked fierce indeed as they came.
“Princess,” said the big man, halting before her with a bow. The other men did the same. “I am Tongren Deshai'in. I am a friend of your sister Sashandra. We here are men of the highlands, Cherrovan and Lenay alike, former enemies united to fight for a common cause. You are a princess, highland royalty. We bow to you and ask you to bless our banner, and to command us in our battle to come.”
Alythia gaped at him in absolute horror. “Me!” she nearly shrieked. “You…you…” She stared across the line of watching faces. There was no worship in their eyes as they regarded her, only a hard calculation. Alythia swallowed hard. “Master Tongren,” she said, in her most composed yet slightly trembling voice, “I fear you have me confused with my sister. I am no war leader. I cannot wield a sword, and I am quite certain that if I commanded you in battle, not one of you would survive to see tomorrow.”
There was laughter, at that. “Quite likely anyhow!” one man said cheerfully. “I hear there's thousands of ’em!”
“Just bless the damn banner, girlie,” said a squat, round man with a bull neck and blond braids. “Give us your Verenthane prayer and look pretty for us, and give us a kiss if we get killed, that's all we ask.”
Alythia glared at him. Highland pagans never had learned how to speak to royalty. “What my friend says,” Tongren explained patiently, “is that it is a formality, nothing more. But we are all a long way from home and it would gladden our hearts all the same.”
His accent was strange, unlike any Lenay accent she'd heard. “You're…Cherrovan?” she guessed.
“I am, as are my sons,” with a gesture to a pair of strong-looking lads, “and perhaps half our number. The rest are Lenay.”
Alythia made a helpless gesture. “Why…why would Cherrovans even want to be led by a Lenay princess?” she exclaimed. “I mean, we're supposed to be mortal enemies, aren't we?”
Tongren shook his head. “After a time in Petrodor, Highness, I've come to realise just how close Cherrovans and Lenays truly are. We are highlanders, with highland honour and highland beliefs, whatever our distance from home. It is the tradition of all highlands peoples to seek the blessing and leadership of the greatest amongst them before battle. Now, of the three Lenay princesses currently in Petrodor, you're the only one who isn't a self-confessed pagan, or currently fighting on the wrong side. Plus you're actually here.”
He seemed, to Alythia's consternation, unaccountably cheerful. Highlander though she was, she had never understood that in Lenay men. Now, she failed to understand it in Cherrovans. “But I'm Verenthane!” she pleaded with them. “I mean, you're not even…are you?”
“Jory's a Verenthane,” said one of the lads Tongren had claimed as his sons.
“But we don't hold it against him, much,” said another, and others laughed.
“Goeren-yai men are preparing to march to battle in the Bacosh for your father,” Tongren added, “and he's certainly a Verenthane, last time I looked.”
Alythia knew she was trapped. She spun around to stare at the barricade behind. There were many others, blocking all lanes and streets in and out of Dockside. They seemed to her less like barriers of defence than walls of a newly erected cage. The world conspired to trap her, to burden her with responsibilities she had never called for, to fight for people she had never loved against those she had no reason to hate. The Steiners had killed Gregan and ransacked Halmady Mansion, not impoverished mobs of the faithful from Petrodor's worst slums. If it were the men of Patachi Steiner and his allies who now marched upon them, she had no doubt she would have manned the barricades herself with whatever weapons the locals would entrust her with. But this…this was not fair. This was not the life she had chosen, nor the person that she was.
But if she refused these men, she would offend them. When trapped in a cage with angry beasts, she reasoned, it was safest to befriend them, if only to preserve one's self. And besides, she had to protect Tashyna. And Elra. She turned back to the hard, highland men and struggled to regain her most princessly decorum.
“Please understand that I am not uncertain for doubting your honour,” she said sweetly. “I am terribly honoured. I only fear that I shall do you a disservice. I have never fought a battle before, and I am not a warrior like my sister.”
“You fought when the Steiners attacked Halmady,” Tongren countered. “You bear the bruises.” Alythia's eyes dropped, and she swallowed hard. “And you befriended a highland wolf. I hear she runs only to the sound of your voice.”
Alythia heaved a deep breath. She was a widow. She had nowhere to go but back to her father. One day soon, she would be with him again, back with her Lenay family. Then, she would be a true princess once more. Until then, she would grit her teeth, and suffer whatever burdens the gods laid upon her.
“I accept,” she sighed at last. “Please, what do you wish of me?”
The men had a banner with them, a black wolf's head against a blue background, fastened to a spear. Alythia kissed it and said a prayer over it, and then the men all dropped to one knee and she said a prayer over them too. Many Torovans stared as they passed, no doubt wondering what ill portent would follow these highland ruffians and their rituals.
Tongren then insisted that she carry a knife, even though her only previous use of one had been cutting steak at meals. Strangely, that notion offended her less than she'd thought it might. He showed her how to hold it and which part of her attacker was best to stick it into. Alythia watched with cold curiosity as men from her little highland army dispersed toward the barricades, leaving just Tongren and his two sons.
“Say,” said Elys, Tongren's eldest son, “why not bring out your wolf? She'll be a more dangerous weapon than any knife, I'd reckon.”
“I don't think so,” said Alythia. “She'd just run around in circles and get in everyone's way.”
“Ha!” laughed Tongren, giving the knife an expert, dangerous twirl. “That's what battle is, girl.”
Palopy was a grand old building, built high on the slope overlooking the first U-bend in Maerler's Way. It had four floors of yellow limestone, and two main faces, one looking down onto the harbour, and the other facing the outer bend in Maerler's Way. A high wall, lined with spikes, separated the lawn and courtyard from the road, its gates barred with steel-reinforced beams. Behind Palopy, the slope rose into a vertical cliff, protecting it from the rear. Downslope, and to the north, were large, heavily defended properties belonging to Families Gelodi and Vailor, the former of the Steiner alliance, the latter of Maerler. The only access presented to the mob was Maerler's Way, and they were giving it everything they had.
Rhillian crouched behind the low wall that lined the roof as her archers waited patiently for the raging mob to charge again. There were two groups, from this vantage-one on the upslope stretch of the Way, the other downslope. The curve of the bend itself was littered with bodies, nearest the archers’ range. Now there were shots flying across the road from the building directly opposite, surrounded within the bend. Men had stormed that building, neutral though its residents were, and Rhillian had seen men, women and children dragged protesting into the street. One man had fought, and been hacked with an axe. The others had been swallowed up by the receding mob. Now, Palopy and its talmaad defenders were constantly under fire from the building.
“Here they come again,” said Terel, peering above the wall, his bow in hand.
“They coordinate through the back alleys,” said Rhillian, watching with narrowed eyes. “The upslope group with the downslope. They'll blow the horn this time, both will come at once.”
At the head of the upslope mob there was indeed a man with a horn. They milled, yelling and chanting, waving weapons in the air. The road was not nearly wide enough, and the crowd stretched out of sight as the Way bent. Many of their number would be rushing off elsewhere, Rhillian knew. Thus the armed crowds had been spreading across Petrodor, congregating at one serrin property, or the property of a serrin sympathiser, and burning and looting until it all became too crowded, and then moving on. So far, the talmaad had managed to stay ahead of the tide. But the tide continued to build.
The horn blew, and with a roar, the forward part of upslope and downslope mob broke free and sprinted toward the Palopy wall. Rhillian rose with her own bow in hand, strained and loosed, knowing that despite not favouring the bow, she could hardly miss. She ducked to fit another arrow as shots from across the road sang past, or clattered off the wall. On her second shot, she could see men falling as they charged, perhaps forty talmaad firing rapidly across the road face of Palopy, from rooftop and windows. Bodies fell in tangles, tripping men behind, cutting swathes across the cobblestones.
A yell came nearby as a serrin took a crossbow bolt through the arm, and then the mob reached the wall. The talmaad continued firing, loosing arrows judiciously into those trailing behind-here a man with a sword fell, there a strong-looking man with an axe screamed and tumbled on the cobbles, while skinny lads, older men, and crazed howlers armed with naught but their fists continued unscathed. The rhythm of blows upon the gates began once more, as the new arrivals took up the hand-carried ram that the previous waves had brought. Those men had held shields, evidence of preplanning, but when the remnants had turned and run, the shields had been left behind.
Down on the garden courtyard, and safe from crossroad fire, three serrin armed with glass bottles ran to the wall. Into the neck of each bottle, a flaming rag had been stuffed. The men reached the wall, braving the occasional flying stone, and lobbed the bottles over the wall-top spikes. Humans made oils that flamed in battle and caused terrible burns, but they were nothing like as hot as serrin oils. The flames that burst and roiled above the wall were blue and green and terrible screams rose with them. The hammering on the gates stopped and now there were men running back the way they'd come, some unscathed, others burning and thrashing. Some stumbled and rolled on the ground, screaming, although they did not appear to be afire at all.
“Save your arrows!” Rhillian yelled, and firing at the retreating mob ceased. In truth, they had more than enough arrows for many days of siege, but it was not mercy she offered. Traumatised men who had seen their comrades burned alive by unholy blue-green flames would spread tales of terror amongst their fellows. Fear drove the mobs. Fear was the archbishop's weapon in sending these fools against the serrin. But fear could be her weapon too.
To Rhillian's left, Kiel risked a brief aim above the wall and loosed a last arrow. A running man took the arrow square between the shoulder blades and fell, his staff and Verenthane star clattering to the road.
Rhillian gave Kiel a glare beneath the wall. “I know you heard me,” she reprimanded him.
“That one was a priest, I think,” said Kiel, coolly fitting another arrow. His grey eyes were calm, as though killing these men troubled him less than plucking flowers. Well, Rhillian thought drily, perhaps it did. “Their gods do little to save them,” Kiel mused. “How interesting. The last one, too, that I killed fell with a most satisfying thud. No hand reached down from the heavens to divert my arrow. I think I'll kill another, just to be sure.”
“That's unworthy, Kiel,” Rhillian muttered. “Even for you.”
Kiel's expressionless grey eyes appraised her as he knelt. “How so?”
“There is such a thing as decorum, even under threat of death.”
“And under threat of the total annihilation of one's people,” Kiel asked mildly, “what does decorum dictate then? I say that we should adopt a new decorum. One more befitting our circumstances.”
“I know what you say, Kiel,” Rhillian snapped. “It's the same thing you always say.” The wounded serrin was moving herself to the nearby trapdoor, cradling her impaled arm. Rhillian wondered how much longer until the ballista downstairs was working. Surely not long now.
Kiel gave a small smile. “I'm nothing if not consistent,” he said.
“If the serrinim are not the brightness that keeps the dark at bay,” said Terel, calmly testing his bowstring tension, “then we shall become the black hole that drinks in all the light.”
“Terel,” said Kiel, sardonically. “Such poetry. What poetry do our enemies compose, do you think?” He cupped a hand to his ear and listened to the screams of agony from the wall, and the chanting fury of the crowds beyond. “Such blissful music. We should first survive, my friend. Poetry can wait.”
Terel gave Kiel a blunt stare. “To be adequate, Kiel, we might measure ourselves to a deer or an elk, a noble grazer on the grassy plains. To be great, we might measure ourselves to the great hunters, the cats or the wolves and bears. You measure us to the worms, Kiel. If you are lucky, you might one day make a toad.”
Most serrin would have given some reaction, perhaps a smile, a shrug, or a furrowed brow of concern, a prelude to a long and continuing argument. “We shall see,” Kiel said instead. His grey eyes were like still pools on an overcast day, betraying nary a ripple of emotion. “We shall see who is right, my friend. And perhaps sooner than later, I feel.”
Rhillian ran crouched to the long trapdoor, and descended the stairs into an ornate hallway. Suddenly her world was all glossy carpets and intricate wall hangings, the screams of the burned and the whistle of arrows far away. Three years she had spent in Petrodor, off and on, and still the crazed extremes of the place made her head spin. She turned into a sitting room, which had been converted into a space for the wounded. Master Deani cared for just two talmaad and Hendri the groundsman, who had been struck in the head by a stone in the opening attack. The woman was Shyan, Rhillian saw, now tended by two human staff who poured her poppy-flavoured water while examining where the crossbow bolt had gone straight through her bicep.