Petrodor: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 2 (77 page)

Barely had the barricades been abandoned than they were being manned again. Grim, tired Docksiders stood in rows, improvised weapons at the ready. As late afternoon shadows fell across the incline, upper Petrodor was burning. Sasha sat atop a Dockside roof and polished her sword. There were fires everywhere. Famous houses were ablaze. Smoke blackened the sky and, when the wind shifted, there would come loudly the screams, shouts and clashing steel of battle.

A man climbed out the trapdoor nearby and sat beside her. It was Bret, his previous thin beard now shaved to allow easy access to a shallow cut on his jaw. He gazed up at the battle.

“They're not fighting with sticks and knives up there,” he observed.

Sasha kept polishing. The blade was so brilliant now she could see her reflection.

“They say Rhillian gave Maerler the star,” Bret added when Sasha did not reply. “Makes you wonder why Maerler didn't just have his brother priest bring him the star, if he wanted it so badly.”

“Some priests have morals,” Sasha said darkly. “Some serrin don't.” Bret just looked at her, long and wordlessly. Sasha kept polishing, crosslegged on her chair. “Maerler's a damn fool. Even Patachi Steiner didn't try to take possession of the star directly. He at least knows no one will ever confuse him with a saint.”

“Patachi Maerler has always been a proud and vain man,” Bret agreed. “Patachi Steiner is just greedy. Rhillian must have decided to chance Maerler's vanity.”

“Her opinion of humans is at its lowest ebb,” Sasha muttered. “And we keep fulfilling her expectations.”

“What do you think she intends?” Bret asked, nodding toward the conflagration. It would take months, Sasha was sure, for the smell of ash to wash from the Dockside. “I mean…what does this gain her?”

“She wants to see Petrodor bleed. She sets humans at each other's throats. She hopes there'll be nothing left with which to fight a war.”

“She's mad,” Bret said softly. “All she'll create is a single victor. And then we'll have tyranny.”

“She doesn't think it could get any worse.”

Bret shook his head sadly. “These serrin, they think they know everything. She hasn't seen anything yet.”

More to the left, a new mansion was on fire. Nearer to Sharptooth, now. The fighting seemed to be heading that way. Perhaps Patachi Maerler was losing, but Sasha knew that it was rarely so simple. More likely, the two sides would batter each other to a bloody draw. Just taking one ridgetop mansion would cost the lives of many soldiers. By the time Steiner's forces managed to smash their path all the way to Maerler House atop Sharptooth, most of the army would be dead.

A mansion's roof caved in, followed by a rumbling crash of collapsing masonry and a billow of sparks. Gasps and exclamations went up from the neighbouring rooftops. Some children sounded excited and their parents were not discouraging them. Many Docksiders seemed happy to see the upper slopes burning for a change. Sasha wondered if they'd be quite so pleased when Bret's prediction came true.

Bret looked at her for a moment longer. “Kessligh has forbidden it, you know.” Sasha gave him a blank, questioning look. “Going after Errollyn.”

Sasha returned her attention to her sword. “I'm not going after Errollyn.”

“And you'd never lie to me, would you Sasha?”

“If you're so unsure that you need to ask the question, what possible use would my answer be?”

Bret took a deep breath. “Rhillian won't hurt Errollyn, Sasha. She hasn't gone that far yet.”

“Kiel would.”

“But Kiel's not in charge, is he?”

“They're serrin, stupid,” Sasha muttered. “They don't understand the concept. Kiel follows Rhillian on the big picture, but on smaller matters he does as he pleases.”

“Sasha…wouldn't it just be better to let it all end here? Everyone's suffered enough.”

“There was a great warrior in Lenay legend named Tragelyon,” said Sasha, still polishing. “He led his people to a new land and settled them in an uninhabited valley. His neighbours didn't like it and gathered a warband to attack. Tragelyon challenged them to single combat, and drew a circle in the dirt around him with his sword. Every attacker who entered that circle died.

“That's where we get the tachadar circles from today. Tachadar in old Taasti means space, but more than space. A personal space, to which every man's honour entitles him, no matter if he is in his homeland, or travelling in a strange land. That's why we don't hug and kiss so much as Torovans do. You only enter that tachadar when invited. When stepping into the circle for sparring, we always ask permission on the other person's honour.

“I have my tachadar, Bret, even in this city. And Errollyn has his, even though he's not Lenay—he speaks it well enough, and he fought for Lenayin, he's earned Lenay honour. Rhillian didn't just spit on it, she pissed on it—mine and his. It's unacceptable.”

“But Errollyn is more than your friend,” Bret said quietly. Sasha didn't look up. “And maybe Rhillian felt, by taking him into your bed, you crossed
her
circle.”

“No,” said Sasha, very firmly. “You can't claim another person unless they want you to. Errollyn came into my bed by choice. He left Rhillian's service by choice. She pissed on that too.”

“Sasha…here in Petrodor, we also have tales and legends. There is one of two sisters who loved each other very dearly and both married powerful men from different families. Those families have a falling out, which turns to conflict. The carnage is great and, with each family member killed, the two sisters grow to hate each other more and more. Finally, one day, they find that all of their families are dead, and only the two of them remain…and yet, despite their families having been the only cause of their hatred, they still cannot bring themselves to reconcile.”

Sasha gazed at him. For the first time since Bret had sat down, she stopped polishing. “What happened to them?”

“They died together, each impaled on the other's sword.” Sasha swallowed
hard and gazed up at the flames. “It is a terrible thing, Sasha, to fight a friend.”

“And is a friend still a friend,” Sasha asked quietly “when she destroys those things I most care for?”

“Errollyn is not dead, Sasha. Nor will he be.”

“Yesterday Errollyn. Today Petrodor. What tomorrow, Bret? For how long must she desecrate my circle and expect me to sit here on my hands and do nothing?”

Alexanda Rochel strode up the winding, firelit road and tried not to look too hard at the bodies of the dead. Ahead, a wall had collapsed, spilling brick and stone across the cobbles. Amidst the debris lay men in the colours of several southern-stack houses, and others in the maroon and gold of Pazira. Some lay locked together where they'd fallen, arms about the other like old friends. Several soldiers tried to bind the wounded arm of a sobbing comrade. Burning buildings lit the men, walls and bodies in a dancing, hellish glare, and smoke seared at the back of Alexanda's throat.

Alexanda paused before the wounded man. “Hold on, lad, you'll be home soon. This is but a moment in time, be brave and it will pass.” The man tried, but Alexanda could see the arm was half severed. He strode on, repeating his own words in his head. Be brave, and it will pass. The lad had been about Carlito's age. Dear gods.

On a bend ahead, crouched against a wall, a Pazira soldier sheltered behind a huge wooden shield. He gestured wildly at the duke, urging him to caution…already the shield was peppered with at least ten bolts. Another flashed by, skittered off the wall and clattered around the bend, men jumping aside as it came. Alexanda, a sergeant and four personal guard hugged a wall, then ran quickly up and over piled bricks to a huge hold in the wall opposite.

Within was the rear yard of a grand mansion, its lawns and patterned gardens strewn with debris and bloody corpses. Ahead, doors and windows had been smashed in and entrances were now guarded by Pazira soldiers. Alexanda walked inside, down a grand hall littered with broken ornaments and furniture. There were sword cuts in the wall plaster. Here, a spray of blood from a severed artery. There, a body.

Up a flight of stairs, then another, and through more ruined rooms until he reached a balcony. There, behind an ornamental pot large enough
to hold three men, crouched Captain Faldini in animated conversation with a lieutenant.

“My Lord!” Faldini said cheerfully, his eyes sharp with enthusiasm. “Hell of a fight, yes?” His breastplate bore a great scar and his chain mail sleeves were spattered with blood. “A great shame young Carlito is not here to see it, he would have made you proud!”

“Thank the gods for that mercy at least,” Alexanda muttered, taking a knee beside his captain. He had to adjust his own breastplate as he did—it did not fit half so well these days as it had, the buckles tight at his shoulders, and always seeming to slip to his hips. “Where the hells are we?”

“Nearer to Sharptooth than nearly anyone else!” Faldini exclaimed. “Look, now we have this place, our men secure this road here…” Faldini gestured to the dark shadow of street directly ahead, then pointed to the leather map unrolled on the balcony before him. “I don't know what it's called, but it leads right to The Crack, just south of Sharptooth. We're nearly there!”

They were on the Backside-side of the ridgeline, both Alexanda and Faldini having concluded that it was the softest route to Sharptooth. Those fools Belary and Tarabai were thrusting straight along the ridgeline road, and were nothing like as close as this. Probably they were up to their necks in the bodies of their own dead by now. Duke Tosci of Coroman had taken an even more downslope route—to Alexanda's south up the Backside slope, thrusting to clear the ridge squarely into the middle of the southern stack.

Steiner and his patachis were pressing through midslope, knowing that maze of winding roads far better than the Torovan dukes. There was talk of a seaborn attack as well, and a landing upon the southern docks. With no view of the ocean, Alexanda had no idea if that was just talk or not.

Abad of Songel, it was said, was fighting for Maerler, but Pazira had not yet met him in battle if that were the case. Of Flewderin and Cisseren, there was no word, only rumour. Clearly Maerler was badly outnumbered. But in this city, the odds of any battle were stacked so heavily with the defender that numbers were meaningless. The serrin had held out for much of a day with just a handful of
talmaad
against thousands.

“We're getting lots of white cloth hung over the walls,” Faldini continued. “Many of them don't want to fight.”

“Doesn't help us much if they won't let us in,“Alexanda grumbled. He peered through the balcony railings onto the narrow street below. Pazira men were mustering in formation, shields to the front, rams, hooks and grapples behind. Captain Faldini had done his work well, preparing for this even while Alexanda strove his utmost to try to ensure it would never happen. There
were even draught horses held in reserve. They'd brought down several defensive walls so far, and would surely be needed for more.

Faldini was not bothering with the artillery some of the other dukes were using—it took too many men and horses to haul, he'd insisted, was difficult to manoeuvre in close corners and nearly impossible to fire accurately on sloping ground. Better yet, Pazira forces now took short cuts between roads by smashing through mansions—“in the front door and out the back,” as he'd put it. No artillery worth its use could fit through a doorway.

“How many men have we lost?” Alexanda asked.

“I haven't been counting,” Faldini admitted. “Perhaps thirty?”

“More likely fifty,” Alexanda growled, giving his captain a dark stare. “I've been counting the bodies on the way down the road.”

Faldini shrugged. “That's why they love you more than me,” he said with a grin. Were Faldini not such a competent officer, Alexanda was certain he would love him not at all. It was one of the great ironies of life that often the most bloodthirsty and cruel commanders suffered the least grievous losses. Bloodthirsty commanders won quickly. Quick victors suffered fewer deaths. A cautious officer could become bogged down, his indecision prolonging the fight, and thus killing more of his own men. In war, as in so many things, the gods displayed their foul sense of humour.

Longbow fire thumped and whistled from a neighbouring balcony, then from the roof above the two men's heads. Arrows fled into the firelit night toward the mansion at the road's end where the crossbow fire seemed to be coming from. Longbows would do little good at such range, but the object, Faldini explained, was to put the opposing archers off their aim and jangle the enemy's nerves with incoming fire. Good longbow men could fire six or more times to a crossbow's every one, suiting them better for the purpose.

“They'll know how close we are now,” Alexanda muttered. “Several more mansions like this one and we'll cut through to Sharptooth. They'll pull up some reserves, perhaps make a flanking move downslope to our right, and come at us from there.”

“Let them flank to our right,” Faldini said. “If they grant us the height and attack from downslope, we'll slaughter them. Better yet, the defensive advantage becomes ours, we've these magnificent big shields you had the foresight to bring in such large numbers…” Alexanda snorted, recalling Faldini's protests at the big ugly things, “we can make a wall across the road and dare them to scale it.