Blackdog (5 page)

“She is Old Lady.” The Blackdog was Attalissa's champion, and by tradition avoided becoming entangled in administrative debates among the priestesses. But Otokas should have backed Kayugh up in that. He'd feared to seem partial, to betray that which probably half the temple knew already.

Kayugh handed him an arrow that had come clattering down on the stones behind them. He straightened its fletching absently, found the bowman who had shot it, and sent it back. Not an accurate shot, not a straight flight, but it scratched over the man's helmet and sent the raider skipping back, to slip and fall on the algae-slimed stones of the shore, in a puddle of torchlight, and Kayugh's following shot was truer, piercing his unprotected cheek.

“Attalissa's luck was with me on that one.” Kayugh took a deep breath. “The lack's past remedying, anyway. Prayer won't make arrows.”

Otokas nodded, never taking his eyes off the lake. The near shore was littered with raiders dead and wounded. They had come within bowshot carrying torches to light their work, and though the first splashing rush ashore had carried large wicker shields to cover their fellows fixing the last few boats into the bridge, and raider archers had shot blindly at the lightless gate-tower roof, finding targets by mischance, Attalissa's priestesses had had the better of it.

Where the sisters shot at shadows briefly caught in torchlight or blocking the water's dark gleam, the Blackdog had clear sight. Otokas had lost himself in killing, settling the dog's fury against the invaders in the smooth action of draw and release, the selection of targets, picking off the raiders’ archers, always with half his attention on the waiting, watching wizard.

The warlord—the wizard was that, Otokas had no doubt, though wizards were more wont to stand in the shadows at some leader's shoulder—seemed content to wait, and watch, as his followers died.

Or as the defenders expended their arrows. Sisters of the dormitories assigned to support those on the bell-tower roof brought no more arrows, but began to carry up weightier missiles, in case of a direct attack on the gates the tower straddled. They had already depleted the supplies meant for the water-gate's defence.

“Crows,” Kayugh muttered. “Seems like there's two more for every one we kill. Hold, Sisters. Save what shafts we have left. That means you too, Oto.”

He lowered the bow, flexed a hand that was starting to cramp. Kayugh gave him a worried look.

“How's Attalissa now?”

He was doing his best to shut the goddess out of his awareness, to keep her from knowing just how bad it looked to him, but he could feel her fear nonetheless. And a hard, glowing ember of fury that the girl had no outlet for, save the frustrated tears that she was so far stoutly resisting.

“Afraid. Upset.”

“They won't be able to starve us out very quickly, and we can keep them from scaling the walls. Serakallash may come in time.”

“They may.” But he heard no hope in his own voice. “If the wizard looks like taking the temple…I'll have to get her away, Kayugh. Whatever the cost.”

The last of the boats was lashed in place, the holy islet tied to the town's island again. There was movement on the far side of the channel, horsemen riding to the water's edge by the first of the boats, torches held high, spreading fire over the water.

“Yes.” Kayugh took a deep breath, flexed her shoulders, and raised her voice. “Sisters—the Blackdog says this warlord is a wizard, and he means to harm the goddess somehow, enslave her or kill her. And the dog says it's possible, not some nightmare from an old tale of the west. This abomination is what we're fighting. We're here to keep him from Attalissa, from the goddess, from the lake, from our little ‘Lissa. Make the wizard your target, every chance that offers.”

“He's lighting himself up well,” said one, and laughed, no mirth in it. “Afraid we might miss him.”

“If that is him in the centre and not a decoy?”

Faces turned to Otokas. “Yes,” he said. “In the helmet with a bear spread-eagled over it as crest, if you can make that out? His horse is the pale gold mare, with red-dyed harness.” The Blackdog was certain. It could smell the magic rising from him like the scent of new-turned soil in the hot summer sun. And when the warlord moved, he left a shadow-image in the eye, an eddy of red-edged black, like an absence of flame. The Blackdog had never seen the like before—not that it could remember, but to Otokas it felt as though it should remember. That flame-shadow raised the hackles of the spirit.

“We see him,” one of the women confirmed. “Gold helmet? It catches the fire nicely. But forget the horse, dog. They're all shadows from here.”

“They're all ‘it,’ from here. How d'you know it's a mare?”

“He can smell it.”

“When it gets closer we can check.”

“If it's a stallion, Oto, you buy a jar of the best Marakander wine for every dormitory.”

“What does he get if he's right?”

“A kiss from Spear Lady,” someone away to the side called, and there was a flutter of nervous giggling that fell to abrupt silence when Otokas frowned in that direction.

The warlord reached the bridge of boats, and the riders about him dismounted. He did not, staring up towards the gatehouse and its high parapet, the defenders who should have been invisible, since they weren't such fools as to surround themselves with torches. Otokas felt almost a physical shock, unseen eyes finding him.

I told you, Blackdog. Bring out my bride. I want to wed her with the dawn. I'm surprised she's stayed hidden behind you this far. I thought she would make some effort to protect her people. Is she grown so cold-hearted, or is it cowardice? Tell her to come out to me, or I will march the folk of the town to the shore, here, and behead them, a dozen at a time, until bodies fill the channel. Tell her, if she fights me, I will set a fire on this town that will burn its folk to ash and poison the lake and her soul with the curses of their ghosts. But tell her, if she comes to me willingly, I will rule as a kindly father, and teach her and her folk both to love me.

Otokas shut his mind against the wizard, felt the faint pressure of attention blocked. The wizard grinned at him, mouthed words in the darkness. He couldn't read their shape.

The warriors lining the bridge began to drum spears and swords on shields.

The warlord urged his horse forward, stepping, almost hopping, into the first of the boats.

“Attalissa grant they've got my brother's boat in that lot,” one of the sisters said.

“Why?”

“Lazy bugger. Rotten planking.”

“Oh yes. Let it put a hoof right through.”

“Pitch the godless wizard into the lake.”

“Think he can swim?”

“Not in armour. Not even if he is a wizard.”

“I can,” Otokas said.

“But it's Attalissa's lake. More reason to think
he'll
drown despite his magics,” said the one who'd first spoken. “Leave us our fancies, eh, dog?”

“I'd fancy seeing Otokas swim in anything.”

“Or nothing.”

Nervous giggles.

“Children,” he said, tolerant of most teasing, so long as they left Kayugh out of it.

Kayugh didn't join the anxious laughter. The horse picked its way over the unstable bridge, held under some wizardly control, not mere Grasslander horsemanship. The warlord's escort followed afoot, their horses left behind. The wizard's mount gained the temple shore with a scrambling leap and broke into a trot, drawing further ahead of the escort, crunching onto a gravelled garden path. Those who had followed him onto the bridge ran to catch up, their torches streaming like banners.

“Archers,” Kayugh said calmly. “Now. Kill him.”

The first arrow struck with a powerful arm behind it, stout Kedro's, and must have pierced through the rings of his mail. Otokas saw the warlord flinch back, arrow protruding from his chest. But in the space of an eye's blink he gestured in the air before his face, reins caught on his pommel and what looked to Otokas like a web of yarn stretched between his hands. The following flight of arrows curved away as though a heavy wind had caught them. The wizard closed a gloved hand around the shaft in his chest and snapped it off, throwing it aside and taking up the reins again. Three of his guard were down, though. The wizard ignored them, ignoring the continuing ragged flurry of arrows, which scattered as if he were the centre of some deflecting storm.

None of the raiders shot back.

Kayugh peered down the slope. “Was he hit, Oto?”

“Only one arrow made it through to him, but yes. Didn't seem to bother him, and they're just blowing away now.”

“Damn
him.” She made it a prayer. “Hold! Aim for those about him, then. His favourites, his commanders, whatever they are.”

Kayugh drew her own bow again, took careful aim, not for the wizard's guard but one of the torch-bearers standing on the near end of the bridge. It was a neat, powerful shot, through the throat and a leather collar that did not protect. That tattooed desert woman crumpled, and the dropped torch smouldered.

“Burn,” Kayugh whispered. But it went out, rolled into bilgewater, perhaps. “Godless bastard.”

Other arrows found closer marks, though many were turned by armour. None touched the wizard or his horse.

Otokas let one of the sisters take the bow from him. He watched, eyes narrowed, as the wizard reined in below the gate. The warlord's followers clustered behind him, largely shielded by whatever spell he had worked against the arrows.

“Enough,” Kayugh said in disgust. “Wait a better chance, Sisters. Spears might get through, or stones. Wait for my word, though.”

The raiders muttered among themselves in some foreign language, and laughter rattled off the wall.

Women gripped spears, or hefted what heavy missiles had been carried up to them. Jars of pottery and brass, bricks, paving stones, oddments of statuary Old Lady certainly did not know the enterprising sisters had carted off. It might be harder to blow away a jade lion the size of a baby, Otokas considered, and he balanced that on the edge of the parapet, waiting with the rest on Kayugh's word.

She waited. The warlord smiled. His folk fell silent, though there were screams in plenty, shouts and riotous calls, from the island town. And the hungry red roar of burning houses.

There were more folk gathering at the far end of the boat-bridge. Raiders, with townsfolk, men and women and children, their hands bound behind them. Hostages to the goddess's acquiescence as the wizard had threatened. The torch-bearers had followed the warlord, though, and to the sisters the clustered families would be lost in the night's darkness.

Otokas said nothing of them to Kayugh, and hoped the goddess did not realize their presence yet. The man's heart might tear, but the Blackdog had no heart-room to spare for any soul but his goddess. And if the warlord did not know that—it was one small weight in the balance on the Blackdog's side, leverage the wizard might think he had, only to find he pushed against nothing.

Otokas studied him with the Blackdog spirit's eyes. The warlord wore a long mail byrnie like the warriors of the kingdoms of the north, its fine rings gilded, not just by firelight. No blood marred it where the arrow had pierced, though a dark mark showed the stub of the arrowshaft. His helmet was likewise gilded, the eyes of the bear snarling in the centre of his brow set with garnets, or maybe even rubies. Instead of any other jewels he wore a number of cords draped around his neck and hanging to either side down his chest—leather thongs, yarn, ribbon, what might have been braided hair or grass—each one doubled, a long loop. He carried the sabre of the steppes at his side, a single-edged blade, slightly curved, a horseman's weapon, and his face was of the Great Grass north of the Four Deserts: brown-skinned, with narrow, light brown eyes. His long hair, the colour of his skin, hung loose save for braids to either side, into which bears’ claws had been knotted, swinging against his cheeks as he turned his head, taking a count, it seemed, of the women on the tower roof. Whatever he was, he probably saw in the dark as readily as Otokas did. He looked a man in the prime of life, but there was a greyish cast to his face, as if of illness or exhaustion, and his eyes were sunken.

To man's eyes he was an awesome figure, gold in the torchlight on his golden horse, demonic, eyes a glimmer, red, catching the light.

No. Otokas saw that with his own vision and the dog's both, a red glint that was not reflection, and the eerie, flame-edged shadow still shivered after his every movement, caught just in the corner of the eye. For a moment, just a moment, as though some curtain were swept aside, Otokas saw dark fire running like molten copper, tracing through the man's body, twisting like a flame where his heart should be.

“I am…Tamghat.” As though the name should mean something, or as if the wizard temporized, that pause. “As I told your mad dog there, I have come to make Attalissa of the lake my bride. We shall be wed and bedded with this morning's dawn, and if you stand between us you will die.”

The sisters were stunned into silence a moment, and the warlord sat on his horse smiling, with mocking confidence.

“She's a child!” someone shouted down in simple outrage, and there was a brief hesitation, a shifting of the wizard's attention elsewhere.

The Blackdog scrabbled at Otokas, wanting out. Fling himself over the parapet, have the throat out of the wizard. He resisted it. This Tamghat was something powerful enough to kill him, leaving aside the simple overwhelming numbers which could do the job just as well, and dead, he left Attalissa…not unprotected, never unprotected, but with a protector unfamiliar and ill-prepared, at best. At worst…best not to think of it, the Blackdog taken by the wizard, ‘Lissa's trust and doom united.

He forced the dog quiet and said softly, in Kayugh's ear, “He didn't expect that.”

“What?”

“He didn't know she was a child. Did he really come expecting to face and overcome the goddess grown and in her full strength?”

But if this Tamghat had planned all along to seize the town, hold its folk hostage…perhaps the goddess's power would never have been raised against him, if his magic and his numbers had gotten him over the stone bridge. Gods and goddesses had wed mortals before. It was not so unthinkable a thing. The wizard might argue that she would outlive him, and sharing rule and the wealth of the town for a mortal man's remaining years, even a wizard's extended life, might be thought a small price for peace and the folk's lives. But his eyes were hungry.