Champions Of The Gods

Chapter Twenty-Four

The coming of the Champion of the Gods touched off three days of hysteria in Kano. It was all Mirdon and the other commanders could do to keep the walls patrolled and the troops disciplined.

Eventually the uproar died down. The people of Kano awoke with monumental hangovers, to realize that the Raufi still had their city under siege. The Champion of the Gods had come, but the Raufi had not gone.

«In fact, we're almost worse off than before,» Mirdon said to Blade one evening as they stood on the outer wall. The campfires of the Raufi gleamed ominously in the darkness only two miles away. «All the food that got eaten up in the celebrations these past few days is food we'll miss before long. The Raufi aren't going to lift the siege simply because you've come, and as long as they stay here we're cut off.»

Either someone had told Mirdon Blade's secret, or the man had guessed it himself. But he knew how important keeping that secret was for Kano, and he held his tongue. He spoke to Blade as one experienced soldier to another. That put both of them at ease. Blade quickly found himself both liking and respecting Mirdon.

«Besides,» Mirdon went on, «everyone is going to think each Kanoan is now worth ten of the Raufi, because the gods are on our side. I know that isn't true, you know that isn't true, but do the people, the common soldiers, know it? They don't. That means before long they'll be clamoring to be led out against the Raufi. If we listen to that clamor, they'll be butchered and the Raufi can walk in over the bodies. If we don't yield, they'll start clamoring for my head at least, and sooner or later for yours and Tyan's. Then we'll have civil war in Kano, and the Raufi will be certain to find someone willing to let them through the gates.»

Mirdon looked along the walls, with their cannon-armed towers and their helmeted musketeers. «If the Raufi would make an attack on the walls now, we could butcher them. We've got all the men and guns and powder we need. Everyone will fight like tigers with the Champion's eye on them. Their inexperience won't matter. All they'll have to do is stand or die, and they can and will do that.

«But if Dahrad Bin Saffar has half the brains he must have to have done all that he's done, he won't order an attack. The Raufi will sit out there and wait. They can wait longer than we can, and eventually they'll win.»

Mirdon sighed and turned back to Blade with a bitter smile on his long face. «Champion, I don't hold this against you. You've done much and you'll do more, and I'm sure in the end you'll die gallantly with us. But one miracle isn't enough. We'll need another one to save Kano.»

Blade spent a good part of his time during the next few days wandering around Kano, inspecting the fighters. He discovered that Mirdon was quite right. With enough food and ammunition, the city could hold out for any length of time. Unfortunately, it would be out of both within a month or two.

Those who knew this were carefully keeping quiet. Everyone else seemed cheerfully confident that the coming of the Champion meant certain victory, although nobody seemed very clear about how that victory was to come about.

Blade was able to do a few useful things. He started regular firing practice and inspection of weapons among the musketeers. He organized mobile reserves of cavalry, infantry riding in carts, and horse-drawn artillery. He did a good many other things that would improve the odds if the Raufi attacked the city's walls. What he couldn't do was anything that would make the Raufi launch their attack. That, as Mirdon said, would take a miracle.

While Blade was at work as a general, Katerina was working even harder on her «intelligence» assignment-watching Jormin and finding out what he might be up to. Either she was having no luck, or she was being very closemouthed about what she was learning. She would vanish for the better part of a day, then return, obviously exhausted, but unwilling, to say anything about where she'd been or what she'd done.

Blade wasn't worried about betrayal now. What bothered him was that something was making Katerina violate one of the first principles of intelligence work: pass on what you learn as fast as you learn it. If she vanished now, whatever she might have learned about Jormin would vanish with her.

The thought of her vanishing and dying unpleasantly made him uncomfortable. Being uncomfortable about that made him feel even worse. He could not afford to care as much about Katerina's safety as he was doing, or to let her mean as much to him as she had come to. If he went much farther down that road, she would see what was happening to him. Then, if she was still a clearheaded professional, she would find some way to take advantage of what Blade felt. He would not yet call what he felt «love.» But by any name it was not what he should be feeling, and it had him more and more worried as the days went by.

Then Katerina vanished for two solid days, and when she returned this time Blade knew where he and everyone else stood.

She came back at dawn. Blade was sitting in an armchair by the empty bed. Sometimes he looked at the bed, more often he sipped from a large cup of spiced brandy on the table by the bed. He realized that he was beginning to drink more than he should. From past experience he knew this meant he was trying to hide from himself the fact that he was under a particularly intense strain.

He drank again and saw that outside the window the sky was turning pale. The campfires of the Raufi no longer shone so brightly in the darkness.

A faint knocking on the door made him start. It was Katerina's signal-a one-two-one combination-but weaker and more uncertain than he'd ever heard it. He put down his cup, picked up the sword leaning against his chair, went to the door and opened it. Katerina nearly collapsed into Blade's arms. He held her out at arm's length for a moment, and his eyes widened in surprise as he saw her clearly.

Her hair was a tangled mess. A large chunk of it was missing on one side, hauled out by the roots. One eye was swollen half-shut. Both cheeks, one ear, and the side of her neck showed deep purple bruises. Along the jawline was a swollen, red patch that looked like the burn from a hot iron. Her lips were bruised and swollen so that he could barely make out any of the words she was murmuring.

«Jormin hopes-with Jade Masters-let in Raufi,» was all he caught.

After that Blade stopped listening. He realized Katerina had found what she was looking for-Jormin's plans. He also realized that she'd paid a particularly horrible price for the- information. She'd submitted to the demands of a sadistic madman and had barely escaped with her life. Now he understood why she'd been unwilling to talk about her work.

Blade stripped off Katerina's clothes and put her to bed. The rest of her body was as bad as her face, or worse. Whip marks, burns, bruises-there wasn't anything that Jormin's twisted ingenuity had left out.

It seemed rather a pity that Jormin would have to die quickly. At that moment Blade would quite cheerfully have inflicted on the Second Consecrated everything he'd inflicted on Katerina, and much more besides. He found himself picking up a heavy-barreled musket from the corner, gripping it, and bending it slowly but steadily into a complete circle.

Then Blade's head cleared, his rage faded, and he went to work. He called two of the servants, sending one for a doctor and another for Tyan. He summoned a soldier and sent him off to Mirdon. He got out a map of Kano and a roster of the army and began making plans.

Katerina was asleep now. Occasionally she whimpered, little sounds, painfully weak and helpless. After a little while one battered hand-two of the nails were missing-crept out from under the blankets. Blade took it gently and felt it squeeze his, clinging with desperate strength.

He was sitting like that, her hand in his, when the doctor arrived.

The next morning Blade and Katerina sat down to confer with Tyan and Mirdon.

Jormin's plan was simple, according to Katerina. The Jade Masters would lend the Second Consecrated a dozen strong workmen and a dozen good fighters. He would lead all of them to a point on the outer wall where an old drainage tunnel had been blocked off after the building of the Gardens of Stam. The workers would take out the brickwork at either end of the tunnel while the fighters stood guard. Everyone would be properly disguised, with forged passes and everything else necessary. The resources of the Jade Masters would make all that easy.

Once the tunnel was open, fifty Raufi concealed just outside the wall would slip through it. With surprise on their side, they could easily capture the Eighth Gate, only two hundred yards away.

Then two thousand mounted Raufi would charge in. Some would spread out through the Gardens of Stain, sowing panic and death among the troops camped there. Others would ride straight to the poorly guarded gates of the inner city and seize them. The whole Raufi army would then launch a general attack, and with luck dawn would see Kano fallen forever. Whether Jormin, the Jade Masters, or Dahrad Bin Saffar would rule over the ruins was not important.

«A good plan,» said Mirdon. «Jormin is mad, but he is also cunning. Tyan spoke more truly than he knew when he said that the Champion's woman would lend us wisdom. Without what you have done, Katerina, and the pain you have endured, I doubt if we could have discovered this until too late.»

Normally Tyan would have rebuked anyone taking his words for their own use like that. Instead he let Mirdon's remarks pass without comment. Blade looked from the First Consecrated to the Commander and back again. Seen side by side, they looked even more alike than he'd noticed at first.

Blade unfolded his map of the city and pointed out the Eighth Gate. «There's open ground all around for a considerable distance, and level roads. This means we'll have to be careful to hide everyone well. Otherwise Jormin will get wind of our plans and change his. We'll have one chance to trap him and his Raufi allies, and I want to make it a good one.»

Blade talked for half an hour, with only minor interruptions. Finally he folded up the map and said, «I think everything is decided now?» Mirdon nodded. «Good. Then with your leave I shall take Katerina back to our chambers. She really shouldn't be out of bed.»

«Gods, no,» said Mirdon. «Is there any way she can stay out of this affair altogether? I would gladly sacrifice a hundred good men to spare her that.»

Katerina shook her head «I would be ashamed to have a hundred men die to spare me a little danger. Besides, it would do no good even if I was willing. Jormin will be as suspicious as a mouse who smells a cat. If I do not keep my promise to him, he will certainly become even more suspicious. As the Champion has said, we shall have only one chance. We can leave out nothing.»

They were back in their own chambers before Blade said anything more.

«Well, Kat.» That had become his pet name for her in his own mind. This was the first time he'd used it aloud to her.

«Well what?»

«Do you think there's only a little danger in playing bait to lead Jormin into our trap?»

She sighed and shook her head. «No. I am not a fool.»

«I didn't think you were. You're-«Blade cut himself off. He had an overpowering impulse to put into words what she was coming to mean to him. He fought it down. Instead he finished, rather lamely, «You're running more risks than I'm happy about. I'll be glad when this is over.»

«So will I.» Then she took him firmly by the hand and led him to the bed. At first he protested, suggesting they shouldn't try lovemaking now, when all her wounds were fresh and still hurting. She silenced his objections, first with her lips, then with her body. In the end they made love longer and more passionately than ever before. Blade sensed a quality of desperation in Katerina, as though she had a premonition of her own death and was determined to clutch vigorously at life while it lasted.

As Katerina fell asleep curled up beside him, Blade could not keep an odd thought out of his mind. Was she coming to care for him, and fighting her impulses just as hard as he was his?

That was not only an odd thought. It was a slightly unpleasant one. At this rate they could wind up making each other perfectly miserable, without much chance of saying even a few words to ease the strain!

Blade sighed. He hadn't been in such a damnably awkward predicament with a woman since he was at Oxford. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing to be done about it until after the battle, and damned little to be done even then.