Blackdog (62 page)

T
here had been some slaughter of conscripts in the market square. Rumour told it all over Serakallash, though no one had seen the bodies or knew who—or what—had done it. No one knew if their own sons or daughters had survived. The Tamghati were pretending it had not happened, but there was blood beneath the new drifts of sand the brief storm had left snaking through the streets. Everyone, somehow, knew it, as everyone knew Governor Ketsim had ridden out of town in the night, taking his bodyguard with him. The barracks of the troop of Serakallashi conscripts—called a militia as though they were free and willing guardians of hearth and home—was locked. Those fortunate enough not to have been posted in the market that night were now viewed as some danger themselves, or not trusted, if they ever had been. The Tamghati mercenaries and the mountain-conscripts prowled in bands of five or six, turning indoors anyone who could not give a reason for being out, breaking up any meeting of neighbours at a gate, any pause for conversation between passersby.

All the day following the night that saw murder in her father's caravanserai and the vanishing of Gaguush's gang, Jerusha, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, burning with an urgency that would not let her sleep even if she had not been all night drinking glass after glass of precious coffee, went about town on quiet errands, carrying a scroll full of annotations on fodder and pasturage, a basket of closely written slips of paper, accounts, bills, letters begging deferral of payment of bills. Everyone knew Master Mooshka was on the brink of ruin; little wonder he tried to call in favours and renegotiate old deals. She was stopped six times and passed on, told to get herself home quickly.

Come dusk, there were no people on the streets of Serakallash except the caravan-mercenaries, who always tried the patience of the curfew-watch, when they were not drinking with them.

Come nightfall, there were furtive shadows, gathering at the sand-drifted sacred spring. The sept-chiefs were all dead or they grovelled to Tamghat, like Siyd Rostvadim, who held the title of Deputy to the Governor, but that did not mean there was no one to speak for the scattered septs, no one to stand up and declare they spoke for Serakallash. When the time came. And the place.

“This is madness, ‘Rusha,” her uncle declared. They were few, only a couple of dozen. “This many folk together—this many out dodging the watch.”

“And probably more coming,” she growled. “I didn't summon all these.” People had come with servants, with family, with neighbours. “One fool trusting the wrong person, one clumsy idiot—”

“Get on with it,” one of the new, secret sept-chiefs of the Zaranim said. “We're risking our lives here.” She eyed the weathered pile of skulls, nearly buried in sand now, only a few curves of white bone to catch the moonlight. “Sera has returned, the message said. But we all know the Lake-Lord killed her.”

“Dig out the spring,” Jerusha said. “Dig out the spring and then you'll see.”

“But it's buried—it's—”

“The heads,” her uncle said.

“Attalissa has returned to Lissavakail,” Mooshka said. “The Blackdog has brought her back, and Tamghat will be destroyed. And listen, when Sera fought Tamghat and was defeated—she wasn't destroyed. There were sisters of Attalissa here, in Serakallash, fighting alongside us. Did you know that?”

“I didn't see ‘em,” someone muttered. “I saw Lissavakaili archers shoot my father.”

“A sister of Attalissa bought my life with her own,” Jerusha said, and found her voice shaking. “She died in our house. She's buried in our yard. She's…you don't call them allies of Tamghat in my hearing.” Mooshka shook her gently by the shoulder. “Sera knew she would be destroyed by Tamghat. She went into hiding in the mountains, she had a sister of Attalissa take her there. But now she is coming back.”

“In the mountains?” They didn't believe her. She hardly believed it.

“Dig out Sera's well,” Elsinna said at her side. “She needs to be back in her own place.”

“Who in the cold hells is that? One of the sisters?”

“A daughter of Narva,” Elsinna said.

“Who?”

Elsinna sighed, lapsed into what seemed to be her normal style, more sarcastic than priestly, honest as vinegar on salad. “A god. In the mountains. He's quite mad and very unpleasant, but he's kept your goddess hidden from Tamghat all these years, so don't argue. Dig out the damn spring. Because I'm not going home to tell him I'm sorry, but they didn't want her back after all.”

“That'll take all night!”

“Then go home!” Jerusha snarled. “Go home and hide, and never come back. Attalissa has gone back to Lissavakail—” gone back a drugged captive, it seemed, but if what her father had seen with his own eyes was true, then Tamghat was going to be facing the Blackdog very shortly, not to mention Gaguush in a temper, and Attavaia was only awaiting the return of Attalissa to launch her folk…“It's now or never, don't you understand? Sera has come back to us! Dig out the spring!”

Her uncle led the way, taking the first of the skulls from the sand. People had been executed for trying to take the skulls away. How it had been found out though, no one knew—some wizardry? It wouldn't matter. Tamghat couldn't get down to Serakallash in a night, and by dawn it wouldn't matter, everyone would know that Sera was taking back her town.

Or they would all be dead.

“Keep them at it,” Jerusha whispered to her father. She squeezed Elsinna's shoulder. “I'll be back, Sera and the Old Great Gods willing.”

“Where are you going?”

“We can't risk a patrol coming down here. There's something I have to do. With luck, it will make a distraction. I have a plan.”

“To do what?” Mooshka demanded.

“You don't want to know what. It'll be obvious. I hope. Just keep them digging until the spring is clear. Don't let them all go running off, no matter what happens in town.”

“Don't be a fool.”

“I hope I'm not. We'll see. Kiss me, for luck? And look after Elsinna, all right? Remember she's a stranger here?” If they ended up fleeing, if there was fighting in the streets, she meant.

Mooshka kissed her forehead. “Sera and the Great Gods go with you, ‘Rusha.”

“They'd better,” she muttered, and hoped her father hadn't heard.

Koneh the cook, a distant Battu'um sept kinsman, met her at the side door of the caravanserai, the one that let into her father's house. “Are you sure I shouldn't come with you, Mistress ‘Rusha?” he asked. “I could keep watch, at least.”

“The fewer involved the better,” Jerusha said. “Especially if it goes badly.” She hefted the sack he handed her. It felt heavier than it had when they packed it. “What else did you put in?”

“One of those Northron saxes. You can't wear a sword through the streets, but you shouldn't be out without a weapon.”

“And if they search me?”

Koneh raised his brows.

“Right. I take your point.” If a patrol caught her and searched her, she was dead anyway. “Firepot?”

“That's really a bad idea.”

“Flint and steel could take too long.”

“I should come with you. Let me carry the firepot.”

“Two people are more likely to be seen. The only reason you're involved at all is because you snuck up on me this morning.” While she was packing the things she thought she would need.

He didn't mention the tears she had been shedding as she packed. Jerusha held out a hand. “Fire, Koneh. You're not coming.”

Koneh shrugged and handed her the squat crock. It was hot to the touch, good, the coals it held still smouldered. Its handle was a short chain looped through thick pottery lugs. Koneh had wrapped the chain in rags, though it wasn't hot. Maybe to keep it from clinking. She turned to leave, wrapping her dark scarf over her face. “Lock the door behind me, but make sure someone's waiting here and at the gate.”

She felt, rather than saw, Koneh roll his eyes. The whole household, save the few allowed to sneak out to the meeting at Sera's well, would be watching and waiting by the gates.

She knew he watched her until she left the narrow alley for the dark street.

The plan had been cobbled together during the day, born of equal parts coffee and desperation and elation. She had imagined Attalissa sweeping from the mountains to liberate them all, Sera riding at her side, if what Attavaia had told her was true and her goddess had not died. She had not imagined a wild hawk of a mountain hunter who had never even been to Lissavakail, let alone a real town, come god-driven and carrying a stone, without Attavaia's knowledge or blessing.

At least Attalissa might be in Lissavakail soon, godhead and the Blackdog erupting in wrath even a wizard as great as Tamghat couldn't face, once she was back in her own rightful place. Attavaia was probably about to be flung into her own long-brewing uprising, and Great Gods grant it was better prepared than Jerusha's. She had meant her revolt to follow that of the mountains, had meant to join with the Lissavakaili as they scattered Tamghat's folk behind their wrathful goddess. She had not meant to take the lead, knowing her own goddess weak, if not dead. But instead Attalissa was…she had played backgammon with the girl. And lost, true, but lucky dice did not make a goddess.

Faith, have faith. The mountain uprising was coming. She had to do what she could, here and now, and not be left behind. If the mountains were not prepared—there was nothing Jerusha could do about it. There was no delaying what would happen, what must happen tonight. Sera had come back to them, beyond all hope. They could not sit and wait and send messages asking foreigners, did they think it was the right time? Elsinna seemed dazed and god-driven; trust her words were Sera's will. Or a Tamghati trick to draw out the last loyalists? Jerusha had considered it, after Elsinna had collapsed exhausted in her bed, where she had slept the rest of the night away, oblivious of death and abduction, of the goddess, of miracles and wonders. She had slept through the day, too, while Jerusha, acting as though she believed, made her arrangements. But there was something about the woman…truth, and anger, and the same intensity, blind to all other beings, that she had glimpsed in Holla-Sayan a time or two, and now knew the root of. So
something
drove Elsinna down from the mountains, and chance blew by like a leaf on the storm-wind. Snatch it now, or lose it forever.

Jerusha knew the alleys, the places where walls were crumbling and she could scale them, or climb to a roof and travel without ever coming down to the streets. The greatest danger would be that some fool had been taken on the way to the well and even now was telling the governor's people that something stirred this night.

The market square was the usual nighttime empty, wind-whining space, a litter of the day's debris: dung, spilt fodder, trampled vegetables, feathers, chaff. The wind whirled what was dry into sand-drifted corners. People had died here, not yet a full turn of the stars since. A mounted patrol emerged from the dark mouth of a lane opposite just as she left the shelter of a doorway. Jerusha froze, then moved slowly backwards.

“Quiet tonight,” a voice said. That was all. They rode past—of course they picked her very street, and a horse turned its head, snorted. Northron mercenary. A native Serakallashi or a Grasslander would have reined in at once and searched the shadow. She breathed softly through her mouth until the dull pad of the hooves had ceased to float back to her. Then she slunk once more into the market square, more cautiously, this time, edging along the wall. Chaff, broken dungcakes—the very poor came gleaning fuel here, but they would come before the edge of dawn, not now when they would be taken for curfew-breaking—dust, summer-dead weeds…if last night's storm had left too much sand…Jerusha knelt in a corner, heaping up by feel the driest rubbish. She used the hem of her coat to shield her hand, taking the lid off the pot. A handful of long straws made a taper of sorts, kindled against the coals, and she slid the burning straws into her modest pile of tinder, blew on it gently, watched the flames grow. Then she moved on and did it again.

She set small fires all around the market square. And oh, the plaster of the Chiefs’ Hall, now the Governor's House, was cracked and flaking at the southern corner, exposing the fabric beneath—mud brick, yes, but part of a wooden post as well. Jerusha smiled and set her last fire there.

And she had not blown herself up yet, so there, Koneh.

That came now.

She opened her sack, buckled on the sax. What remained were tubes of hollow bamboo, fixed to long arrowshafts. She hoped the Over-Malagru caravaneer who brought them for her had known what he was talking about when he explained how they worked—he claimed a sister had married into the trade. Nabbani fire-tubes were a secret art even in Nabban. They'd better be worth the price she'd paid.

Jerusha had got them for Attavaia, but she had kept four, thinking some way of rousing the town at once might someday come in useful. But neither she nor Attavaia had dared test even one. It wasn't, by all accounts, something you could do quietly. If they all failed…well, at least the fires would be noticed before long. Smoke was already rising to smudge out the stars and catch in the throat. Damn, but she'd forgotten the square was paved, beneath the dust and sand. The first tube she tried to set up fell over. And she could feel the heat where she was, too close, too close. Jerusha moved further away, feeling the weight of the sack on her shoulder like a live thing waiting to bite. She had tied tight-twisted hemp rope to the fire-powder-impregnated fuses which led spark to the alchemical mysteries within, because she was not about to set them off while standing by. If her ropes didn't burn, though…well, the fire would reach them in the end. She could hope. If it wasn't found and put out too soon. She wedged the blunt tip of the sax between two stones and rocked it, widening a crack in the fill, tried again, and the tube swayed but stayed upright, pointing roughly skyward. She led the hempen string off to one of the bonfires, moved on to the next. Her hands shook with her haste and she jammed the last two in together, coming to a sudden decision. Great risk, maybe worth it. But she had to act before the fire-tubes woke the town, and she did not know how much time her fuses, long as they were, could give her.