“You lead that mob into my house,” he shouted, “and my family will all die!” The air was thick with smoke, even as the rain tumbled down. Screams and yells were fainter, but only because the crackling roar of flames drowned them out.
“You swore allegiance to Patachi Maerler!” Rhillian shouted furiously. “You are Maerler's man, and I have allegiance to Maerler, and you will let me over or…”
“Or you'll what?” Vailor snarled. “I never swore any allegiance with Saalshen! I never swore to protect demon pagans and cripples with the blood of my sons! Saalshen's time is finished, and I'll not sacrifice my family on the altar of a lost cause!”
“You will regret this!” she hissed. “Do not sleep too soundly at night, Patachi Vailor, for Saalshen's arm is long and her footsteps silent!”
She slid back down the ladder before the patachi could reply, and raced toward the house. Palopy was aflame. The entire western side of the upper floor facing the cliff, now burned like a bonfire on a happy Sadisi. Smoke billowed from the lower floors as the ceilings began collapsing, and the flames spread. The rear garden was filled with Palopy staff-humans all, men and women comforting each other, tending the wounded, covering their faces against the filthy smoke. Some dunked cloth in the courtyard fountain amidst the grass and flower gardens, and wrapped those about their lower faces.
Rhillian ran up a garden path and looked at the wall of Family Gelodi to the east. The spiked wall rose tall, and there was even less hope of escape that way for Gelodi were sworn to Steiner. Ahead, near what was left of the front garden, she could see serrin with bows and oil-shot pouches taken from the ballista, now abandoned upstairs as the smoke became intolerable indoors. Arele and Calia had brought the oil and leather pouches downstairs, where talmaad threw them by hand, to keep the fire burning where the wall had been breached. Artillery fire sailed in at regular intervals, not as accurate as the ballista, but accurate enough. The front of Palopy House was burning in places too, and the gardens were a flaming wreck. Most fire had been trained on the front wall, which had collapsed in two places, but the flames were so intense, none of the screaming mob had made it through. Some had managed to scale the wall with ladders or rope, and been shot. The others waited, chanting, for the fires to die.
There was not enough oil left to keep the fire at the gate burning for long. Arele had divided the oil and ammunition into two, one to the east side, and one to the west. Calia had been on the west side when an artillery shot had hit nearby, killing her and wounding two others horribly. Humans might have found someone to put them out of their misery, but serrin were very bad at that sort of thing. Master Deani had smothered their screams with cloths soaked in solution to make them sleep, and they'd been dragged to the rear garden and left to die. Nothing more could be done. Calia's oil had burned too, when the artillery hit, and that fireball had set much of the west wall on fire. Calia had had the fortune to be standing close. For her, it was quick.
Kiel approached Rhillian, strangely unhurried as stones cracked and bounced behind him-there were no archers atop Palopy's roof now, and the mob filled the street beyond, hurling rocks and firing the occasional arrow through the breach. Serrin fired back, and killed many, but the window of attack was small and the mob was vast. Some serrin had taken to firing almost straight up, to let the arrows fall sharply on the other side of the wall. It had some effect, but there was a wind blowing now, and rain falling, and a vertical arrow was no sure chance of a kill.
“Patachi Vailor?” Kiel asked her. His grey eyes were as calm and cool as ever. Rhillian shook her head. “Shall we attack him?”
“He has a hundred men and many archers,” said Rhillian. “We'll be killed coming over the wall.”
“We'll be killed here anyway.”
“Make a suggestion,” Rhillian said darkly, “or do something useful.”
“We could leave the humans here,” said Kiel. “Serrin alone and unburdened might stand a better chance. If we moved stealthily across the Gelodi wall instead of the Vailor, they might not be expecting us, and then-”
“You're joking!” said Rhillian.
“I'm not. You asked for a suggestion.”
“Make another!”
“Rhillian, I merely suggest that-” An artillery shot erupted with a thud and rush of flame at the front of the house. Rhillian shielded her sensitive eyes. Kiel gestured back over his shoulder, with perhaps the first trace of real frustration that Rhillian had ever seen from him. “They're going to kill us, Rhillian. If I must die for Saalshen then I die gladly, but you in particular are important, and-”
“And our staff are not?” There was a desperation building in her. Had she caused this? Had she been wrong and Errollyn right? How could she be responsible for something so horrible? All her poor human friends with their families’ long decades of loyal service to Saalshen…why had she not thought of them in her plans to save Saalshen's presence in Petrodor? What were a few buildings besides their lives? “Kiel, I don't understand you! How can you not feel for them?”
“I feel for them very much, just as much as you do. But they are not-”
“I don't believe you,” Rhillian said coldly. “You speak like the priests, you say one thing and mean entirely another, and expect me not to know the difference. Is Errollyn the one truly corrupted by the humans, Kiel, or are you?”
Kiel just gazed at her, lips faintly pursed, as if considering a troublesome puzzle set for him by his scholarly uman. Neither her words, nor the flames and screams, nor the prospect of imminent death seemed to trouble him.
Terel arrived at their side. “An issue?” he asked, without preamble. The right arm of his jacket was burned. His angular face was tight, lips pressed thin as he loomed over them.
“Kiel wishes to leave our staff and run,” Rhillian told him.
Terel did not look surprised. “You go, Kiel,” he said, with mock kindness. “You leave the matters of substance to the adults.” Shland'eth rhmara, he said. “Matters of substance.” The context was philosophical, tel as'rhmara, “a strand on the web of truth.” There were few things that mattered more to serrin minds. It was the fabric of the universe itself, truth made incarnate, through the acts of thinking people. Terel excluded Kiel from it all, as an adult might patronise a silly, irrelevant child.
Kiel's eyes darkened. Anger. Two emotions back to back, Rhillian was nearly astonished. “Clever Terel,” said Kiel, with a voice that betrayed nothing of that which burned in his eyes. “Let us hope your sword is as sharp as your tongue.”
Rhillian turned and ran back toward the rear garden, her bow in hand, her quiver feeling strange on her hip. Master Deani was tending wounded on the grass beside the courtyard. Rhillian crouched by the feet of the man he treated-Timon, she recognised, a nice boy with bright red hair, the son of a midslopes jeweller. The boy had slow wits and was too clumsy for jewellery, but he'd made a fair kitchen hand. Rhillian had always seen him cheerful, pleased to be a person of some importance in his community, and no longer a disgrace to his father. Now, he lay burned and moaning, his clothing blackened, the skin of his torso and arm coming away in black and red clumps.
“There's no escape through Vailor,” Rhillian said through gritted teeth.
“I gathered,” said Deani, putting soaked cloth and powder on the burns, cutting away the charred clothes where they stuck to the flesh. Timon screamed. “Can you hold them?”
“No. The wall is down and soon the fires will die. They will come through soon enough.”
“Then we're dead?” Deani asked, still working. There was fear in his voice, yet he worked incessantly, as if striving to keep the fear at bay. A Verenthane man would wish to know if death awaited, Rhillian realised. He wished to make peace with his gods.
“No,” Rhillian said firmly. “When they come through, they will be a narrow, scattered formation. They have never seen swordwork like the svaalverd before. These are not warriors of any note, they shall be slaughtered in their tens and hundreds. The sight should give even fanatics such as this a pause.”
“You give the men of Riverside credit they do not deserve,” Deani spat. “They're not human, they're animals. Listen to them!” Jerking his head toward the chants and yells. “They care nothing for their own lives, and even less for ours. You should go now, take all those who can move and risk a flight over these walls…”
“No.”
“Even if you lose half of them, that's half more survivors than there'll be if you stay here…”
“Deani, who amongst us has the speed or strength to scale those walls, or run fast, or fight if necessary?” With a wild gesture across the smoke-blown garden, and the staff of misfits whom Deani had turned into one of the best and most dedicated household staffs in Petrodor. Attentive and kind and skilled…and yet here a deformed limb, and there a puzzled or childlike expression…all looking at her now, at the serrin lady who had ruled their fates for so long. Even now, there was trust in their eyes. And hope.
“Probably none,” Deani admitted.
“You're telling us to abandon you?” Rhillian asked.
“Most of us dying is still better than all of us dying!” Deani snapped. “You should take those who can, and move now, while you still have a chance!”
“Not while there's still a chance!” Rhillian shouted. “Not while there's still a hope we might turn them with our blades!”
“Stubborn, crazy damn serrin…here's the reason you'll never win a conflict with humans! You always refuse what has to be done! Necessity offends you, and if you ignore necessity, you're dead! Listen to your friend Kiel, he knows! He alone of you all!”
“I'm not going to leave you to die!” Rhillian screamed, heaving to her feet. There were tears in her eyes, and she was trembling. “You don't understand the serrinim, Deani, we can't just leave! We'll shrivel up and die if we go!”
Deani got to his feet also, with emotion in his eyes, and embraced her. Rhillian embraced the small man back, and tried not to sob like a child. “You're too good to us, silly girl,” he told her. He pulled back to pat her on the cheek, in the style of an older Torovan man to a woolly-headed but well loved youngster. “You understand me? You're too good to us. Humans don't deserve you. We never will. And the sooner you realise it, the sooner you'll learn to save your own people.”
Sasha ran up the winding stairs of Tarae Keep, staying close to the wall to avoid others descending. She emerged onto the high southwest tower in falling rain, to find a small crowd there. This was the highest point on Dockside, affording a clear view across the vast expanse of Petrodor incline and the docklands along its foot.
Tarae Keep was perhaps three hundred years old-very old by the standards of Petrodor, where little of the present city had even existed prior to a century and a half ago. The keep had been built by the powerful Ameryn Lord Tarae, whose trading empire had ruled north and south along the Sharaal coast, to protect the road up the incline that was now called Maerler's Way. Today the keep served as a stable for the animals that hauled loads up the Way, and a trading warehouse and market for merchants big and small.
Directly below the tower ran the Dockside end of Maerler's Way, headed for the dock itself. Streets and lanes formerly bustling with trade now bustled with preparations for battle as the barricades were reinforced, buckets of water strategically placed and weapons distributed. If the barricades were overrun, Sasha knew, the keep would serve as a holdout position.
High up on the slope, Sasha could barely see the top of a building aflame, which several locals had assured her was the Saalshen house of Palopy. Smoke made a thick, dark plume in the leaden sky. Along the slope, many other trails of smoke joined to make a single, evil smudge across the horizon.
Beside the tower's western wall, Kessligh held court amongst a small crowd of Nasi-Keth and respected Dockside men. He spoke to them of the defences, addressing each man and assigning responsibilities. It was the first time since her arrival in Petrodor that Sasha had seen Kessligh so completely himself. His manner was firm, his gaze direct and men listened with rapt attention. Only Alaine looked unhappy, his dark curls plastered to his head in the falling rain.
Kessligh saw her through the crowd and beckoned her forward.
“South End has about twelve hundred men who might count as fighters,” she told the gathering. “Not including Nasi-Keth, of course. But I wouldn't rate their weaponry as highly as we have mid-pier…I promised them I'd try to get some halberds or spears down there. They've not enough with reach to defend the barricades.”