The Palace (Bell Mountain Series #6) (34 page)

“You’ve given me some anxious moments today, assassin.”

“No more than I’ve had myself,” Martis whispered, remembering the guard at the door. “Jack’s missing.”

“He’s sleeping on a rag-pile in a kitchen,” Gallgoid said, “safe, for now. Why have you brought him here?”

“To try to get him away from Goryk.” Martis told him the tale. “If we can get out to the coronation field, Roshay Bault is waiting for us.”

“I didn’t know that,” Gallgoid said. “It’s good. I think, if you can get yourself out of the palace alone, that I can manage with Jack.”

“If I can trust you!” Martis thought. But what else could he do?

“Lord Reesh would surely object,” said Gallgoid, “if he could see the two of us, his servants, working against his successor.”

“He wouldn’t like it,” Martis agreed. It was Gallgoid who’d come down from the mountain with the tidings that there was no Thunder King—that the Great Man who lived forever was only a show put on by his mardars. “I have to trust him,” he thought. “There’s no one else.”

“I think I can get out tonight,” he said. “I’ve promised to show my Dahai guards a good time in the city.”

“Find Roshay Bault and wait for me.”

Gallgoid opened the shutters. By light of moon and stars, Martis saw him grasp a rope that dangled down from somewhere up above, climb out the window, and haul himself out of sight.

CHAPTER 37

How King Ryons Came to Silvertown

Merffin Mord and the other self-appointed king’s councilors had been coming to Prester Jod’s house every day to pay their respects to the king. “To keep an eye on me!” Fnaa said. But this afternoon when Mord and Aggo came to see the king, the prester wouldn’t let them.

“I’m sorry, my lords, but His Majesty has taken ill and I’ve made him go to bed,” Jod said.

“But that’s why we’re here!” Merffin said. “We came as soon as we heard the news. You should have sent for us, Prester! People are talking about it in the streets.”

Jod almost asked, “Already?” He had to suppress a smile. He’d started the rumor himself, simply by telling his servants that the king wasn’t feeling well and asking them, please, not to mention it to anyone. He sent several of them out on errands, and they must have gossiped to everyone they met.

“Might we see His Majesty?” Aggo asked.

“I’d rather he were not disturbed,” Jod said. “My own physician will be attending to him.”

“But what’s the matter with him?” Merffin cried. “Is he too sick for his coronation?”

Jod shrugged. “Who can say? I’m sure you’ll agree the coronation must be delayed until the king is well again. We can’t have him collapsing in front of the whole nation.”

Having gotten no satisfaction, the two councilors tramped back together to Aggo’s house for supper.

“He’s lying,” Aggo said.

Merffin snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous! Jod’s the most upright man in all Obann. Why should he tell lies? Why wouldn’t he want the king to be crowned? He brought him all the way from Durmurot for that very purpose.”

“Maybe he doesn’t accept Goryk as First Prester,” Aggo said. “Maybe he knows where Lord Orth is hiding and is protecting him.”

“If Jod says the wretched boy is sick, it’s so.”

“Perhaps.” Aggo walked a few more steps before adding, “And perhaps he won’t recover. And after a suitable period of public mourning for him, there will be no alternative but to restore the Oligarchy.”

“You’d better hope he recovers,” Merffin said. “If he dies, there’s still that boy in Lintum Forest, the pretender, to be dealt with. And we can’t get our hands on him! It would mean no end of trouble. It might even ruin our peace agreement with the Thunder King.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Aggo admitted. Merffin permitted himself to enjoy that.

The Zeph sent back the head of Iolo’s messenger. Chief Osfal was not pleased about losing one of his best riders.

“Hard feelings, I guess,” Iolo said. “Our master King Thunder will settle accounts with those Zephites. Nothing yet from any of the other riders?”

“They’ve hardly had time to cross the mountains, let alone find us reinforcements,” Osfal said. “The Zeph must be camped right below the pass. I’m surprised they haven’t attacked us themselves, after what Goryk did to their mardar and their chiefs.”

“Someone will come!” Iolo growled. “If we hold out for a few days, we’ll get all the help we need. Ryons has no siege equipment.”

Osfal made a rude noise. “How hard is it to cobble together a lot of scaling ladders or chop down a tree for a battering ram? It won’t take much to force our gates, such as they are.”

Iolo frowned. The main gate of Silvertown was a weak spot, no denying it. When the Thunder King’s army took the city, they smashed the original gate to splinters. The replacement was adequate to keep people in, but it might not serve to keep King Ryons’ army out.

“I have some news for you that you won’t like,” Osfal said. “The Dahai have deserted.”

Iolo jumped up from his desk. “What?” he bellowed. “All two hundred of them?”

“They went over the wall just before dawn, where they were assigned to be guarding it.”

“Why was I not told at once?”

“I suppose no one wanted to risk a beating.”

Iolo pounded his desk, making it bounce on the floor. “Never mind the beatings!” he said. “Any man caught trying to desert will be hanged! And I’ll hang him slowly, too!”

Osfal smiled sourly. “You needn’t trouble yourself,” he said. “The enemy will be here by this afternoon. It’ll be too late to desert, then.”

And there it was, Silvertown, on the lap of the great mountains that towered over it, and half a ruin. Ryons remembered the great brick smelting towers that used to overlook the city’s walls. These were only heaps of rubble now. The walls themselves looked solid, except for one place where a wide breach had been made and since filled in with broken stone and timbers. There was a new gate, flanked by a pair of archers’ towers built of logs; but the old gate, with its iron strips and studs, was gone.

The Thunder King’s warriors manned the walls. They stood in silence, knowing they were outnumbered two to one. But was two to one force enough to drive them from those walls?

“I see mostly Wallekki up there,” Shaffur said. He had keen sight. “That’s bad. Those are men who have broken with their clans and tribes—nothing left for them to do but fight. They have given themselves to the Thunder King, body and soul. Their clans will never take them back.”

“We have no stone-walled cities in all of Hosa-land,” Xhama said, “only fences to keep the cattle in. The men come out to fight.”

“Well, these men won’t come out, if they know what’s good for them,” said Helki. “But I reckon we ought to get a little closer and see if they’ll parley. Maybe if we offer them a chance to leave the city and retreat across the mountains, they’ll take it.”

“They won’t,” Shaffur said. “If they do, the Thunder King will impale every last one of them. It’s not a nice way to die.”

Nevertheless, the chiefs marched the army to within hailing distance of the gate. Ryons rode in the middle of the host, surrounded by his bodyguard of Ghols, and wondered how many of them he would lose before the battle was over. Angel perched on his shoulder.

Helki stepped out in front of the army. “I speak for King Ryons, King of Obann by the grace of God!” he called. “Who is in command here?”

“I am!” shouted back a thick, stout man who stood above the center of the gate. “I’m Iolo, General of Silvertown by order of the First Prester of the Temple of Obann. You’d better clear out before our reinforcements come!”

“Hear this, all of you!” Helki answered. “This city of Silvertown belongs by right to Obann and to King Ryons. Open the gates to the king, come out in peace, and you’ll be free to go—back behind the mountains to your own country with your weapons, your horses, and your lives. But one way or another, you can’t stay here.”

“It sounds like somebody’s afraid to fight,” said Iolo. “Well, we’re not!”

“Come out and fight, then.”

“Ha! Make me!”

And that was the conclusion of the parley.

“Now all we have to do is make camp and figure out how to take the city without siege equipment,” Helki said. “Any ideas?”

“They’ll have reinforcements before we can starve them out,” Chief Zekelesh said.

“Then we’ll fight their reinforcements,” Chagadai said. “They’ll be fighting against God.”

“Warlords, please!” cried Obst. “Let’s at least think this through before we do anything. Those are the king’s people held prisoner behind those walls. We are their only hope. Surely God didn’t send us here to fail! But He didn’t send us here to be careless, either.”

The chiefs agreed to pull back a little distance and make camp. Its only fortification would be a screen of Attakotts. The men would sleep with weapons handy, and tomorrow they would fight.

In the great black tent that they’d brought across the mountains when they invaded Obann, the chiefs held a council of war. By and by, the Abnak chiefs lost patience with the talk.

“Words and more words!” Chief Buzzard said. “Let us Abnaks rush that weak spot in the wall. I don’t think those slaves up there will have much stomach to face stone hatchets and scalping knives. Let us go at first light! Meanwhile, the Hosa-men can bash in the gate with a tree. It won’t take them long!”

“They’ll shoot you down with arrows,” Shaffur said.

“If old Chief Spider were alive, he’d laugh at us. Afraid of arrows!” Buzzard shook his head. “Spider would have been over that wall in a minute.”

Ryons sat on his ivory stool, saying nothing, fighting off a sense of dread. “I’ll never be a warrior like Ozias,” he thought. But at the same time, something about Chief Buzzard’s bold words stirred his spirit.

“It’s a rotten plan you offer, O Buzzard,” said Zekelesh, “but if you Abnaks are going up the wall tomorrow morning, we Fazzan are going with you.” He took off his wolf’s-head cap and looked at it fondly, holding it so everyone could see it. “Among my people, no man is permitted to wear one of these until he’s killed an enemy in battle. All my men wear wolf’s heads. You’ll see, my brothers. God will make a way for us. He always has.”

Shaffur grumbled something about running out of miracles, but only Ryons heard him.

Uduqu that morning sat on the foot of Fnaa’s bed in Prester Jod’s house, telling him the story of an Abnak boy who slew a werewolf with a silver-headed spear.