Quillifer

CHAPTER THREE

he ships of the invaders were black on the black water, with black flags and drooping lateen yards. The piers were black with enemy, and the black night rang with screams.

I stared in amazement so complete that it left no room for fear. I had been gone eight or ten hours, and in that time, a fleet had poured like the tide into the harbor and the city had fallen.

Screams. Shots. A sudden rising spout of fire so tall that it overtopped the walls, the flare as a roof fell in.

There was a hissing in the air, a splash beyond. I realized I’d come too close to the enemy, and someone on deck had loosed an arrow. The fear that had been delayed came rushing into my head, and I put the tiller over, and heard the lugsail bang overhead as the boat lost way.

Enemy ships crowded the piers, had grounded on the shore. There was no place where I could land.

Another arrow buzzed overhead and then skipped away over the water like a stone. I fumbled for the sheet, the sail filled with wind, and I raced back into darkness, away from the consuming red light.

My family. My city. On fire.

Panic flayed my nerves, and my mind seemed to chatter like a broken cog in a decrepit mill. I couldn’t imagine what to do. I had no weapons, no armor. Nothing but a small knife to cut bread and cheese, that and a boat I’d borrowed from a friend.

I looked more closely at the enemy ships. Chebecs, I thought, with two or three masts and a raking, jutting bowsprit, capable of traveling under oar or sail, small enough to get up the channel that guarded the city. I had seen chebecs come in and out of port all my life, most bringing wines and silks and spices from the old Empire of the Aekoi.

But never in these numbers. What was moored in the port was a pirate fleet, manned by gold-skinned reivers from the edges of the empire, cities ruled by warlords and brigands, sometimes with the support of the emperor, sometimes without. Pirates such as these had raided the coasts of Duisland in the past, but not in years, not since well before I was born.

And never had Ethlebight fallen to a raid, nor had the city even been menaced in decades, not since the harbor had begun to silt and the entrance become too difficult for a stranger to navigate. Half the attacking fleet should have run aground within a quarter mile of the bight’s entrance.

Screams. Shots. Another gush of flame. I could not sit and watch, not while my family was in danger.

A passage opened in the reeds and I took it. I knew most of the channels, having boated and fished in them since I was a boy, and I was reasonably certain this one led to the salt marshes southeast of the city. The salt marshes were empty at night save for flocks of sheep and their shepherds, but they would also be empty of reivers.

I ran the boat aground on mud, threw out the anchor, and then slogged through reeds and calf-deep mud till I came to the boggy meadows south of the city. The effort had me straining for breath by the time I reached something like solid ground, and then I moved as fast as I could force my limbs. Ooze spurted from my shoes at every step. Urgency dragged me on. The air smelled of salt grass and smoke.

Red light winked through the South Gate, the smallest gatehouse on the wall, built for the convenience of the shepherds and fishermen who lived in or near the marsh. The gate was open, and I increased my pace.

I slowed again as I saw firelight glint on swords and pikes, and I realized that the gate had been opened from the inside by the reivers, who had gathered outside and hoped to tempt desperate citizens to run out and be captured.

Captured to be slaves. For the reivers were here for loot, certainly; but as far as they were concerned, most of the city’s wealth walked on two legs.

From somewhere in the city came the cry of shrill whistles. I retreated into the darkness, then began a circumnavigation of the walls, loping eastward in hopes of finding an unguarded rampart. Fantasies clawed at my brain: find a reiver alone, knock him on the head, take his weapons. Kill more reivers, free the captives, put together an army and retake the city . . . I knew perfectly well the fancies were absurd, but I couldn’t stop them from flooding my mind.

I remembered Captain Hay’s willow whip on my shoulders during the Beating of the Bounds eight years before: here before me was the Broad Tower, the Blue Tower, the Tower of Prince Peter. Beyond the Blue Tower, I thought, there was Sheep Street, which led at an angle into the city and intersected Princess Street. If I got into Sheep Street, it would take me almost all the way home.

As water squelched from my shoes, I dragged myself across the boggy ground and approached the base of the wall. I saw movement on the towers, though I could not be certain whether the people I saw were friends or slavers. There was no indication that anyone on the walls saw my approach across the dark ground. I came to the rampart and raised a hand to touch the cold, wet, dark brick. The wind whistled around the battlements far overhead. Another scream rose on the air, and I leaned my forehead against the wall, closed my eyes, and hoped that the sound was only the wind.

The fantasies that bled into my brain had grown lurid and horrible, graphic accompaniment to the sound of screams and the crackle of burning. My head snapped up and my eyes opened. Whatever the truth was, it could not be as horrible as my imagination. I needed to see for myself.

I looked up and desperately hoped to see something that would help me scale the wall. I could see the dark silhouettes of plants and shrubs growing out of the brick face, and I moved back and forth along the wall, in hopes of finding something like a vegetable ladder that would help me rise. In the darkness, I couldn’t see well enough to choose a path, and so I cast off my heavy cloak, reached for a small bush overhead, seized it with both hands, and hauled myself up. The bush bent under my weight and showered my face with a spatter of frigid dew. My right shoe found lodging somewhere in the courses of brick, and I pushed myself up, the rough brick scraping against the front of my doublet. One hand groped upward, found a fingerhold, pulled until the left foot could prop itself against the bush and propel me farther up the wall.

The wall was thirty feet high, and the battlement on top jutted out over the wall. I tried not to think of how far I had to go, and instead clawed upward with both hands. I found grass and moss growing out of the wall, and it tore away before it would support me. Then I found another grip for my fingers, and pulled myself up just far enough to reach with my fingertips the bole of a small tree. The hard leather sole of my right shoe found a purchase and helped me climb a few inches more.

The masonry was old, and the ground beneath it soft: the wall was no longer perfectly vertical, and the bends and waves in the brick bulwark helped fingers and toes gain a lodgment. Rain had eroded mortar from between the courses of bricks and provided holds. Blood made my fingers slick, and the pain in my arms and shoulders was agonizing. My breath seared in and out of my throat.

After a cold, black eternity, each minute measured by inches, I found myself beneath the battlement, a stone ledge outstepped from the wall by eighteen inches, with the crenellated rampart built on top. I reached out with bleeding fingers, found a handhold, and measured it carefully. It was long enough for both my hands, and I would need both for what followed.

My heart beat in my chest like a hundred trip-hammers. I propped myself as carefully as I could, moved my second hand to the ledge, and then kicked my legs free and swung out over the gulf.

Now there was no going back. If I couldn’t climb the parapet, I would fall thirty feet to the ground below, and lie broken until I was found by reivers or rescue or frozen death.

I pulled myself up, reached a hand up, then fell back to full extension as strength fled my arms. I took a breath, then another, then another. Air flooded my lungs. I closed my eyes and concentrated only on the necessity of climbing the last few feet, but no matter how high I groped, I could not find a handhold.

I needed to reach higher, but I couldn’t pull myself up by a single hand while reaching with the other. Futility warred in my brain with useless, desperate plans, and then I thought I might swing myself like a pendulum, and at the top of the rise reach higher. I began to sway my legs left and right, building momentum with each swing but terrified that my impetus might grow so great it would tear me from my fragile handhold. Puffing like a breaching whale, I swung to the right and at the height of the movement snatched up with the right hand, reached an eroded course of brick, pulled myself up farther, snatched again. Hand over hand, one breath after another, I drew myself up again and again, mere inches each time . . . and then I was able to curl myself so as to get a foothold, and then with one great uncoiling motion I kicked myself up and through a crenellation, to land in a disordered heap on the cold flagstones of the rampart walk.

I surrendered to blackness. My senses fled, and I could only pant for breath like a beaten dog. Agony shrieked through my tormented muscles.

Gradually, through the torment, the world returned, a world of blazing fire, of clashing weapons, of breaking glass, of sobs and screams. I rolled onto my side and stared at the city with dull eyes. Silhouetted by flame, I could see the belfry of the Seven Words Monastery, the fantastic tower at the Court of the Teazel Bird, and the battlements of the New Castle. From somewhere—from everywhere—came the sounds of terror and pain.

I got an arm beneath myself and propped myself up on one elbow. The New Castle, the source of royal authority in the city and the home of the Lord Warden and his garrison of royal troops, had fallen—black flags waved from the tops of the towers. Lost with the castle was any hope of organized resistance. There was no army for me to join, and all that remained for me was the hope that I could somehow rescue my family.

I sat up and gazed around me. In the light of all the fires, the roofs of the buildings were bright as daylight, but the streets below were in deep, black shadow. The result was a perfect map of the city, black streets on a shining background. I found Sheep Street easily, the one lane that failed to follow the city’s gridiron pattern because it took flocks of sheep straight from the South Gate to the Sheep Market just off Scarcroft Square.

The corsairs had fired the thatch of many of the houses, presumably to drive the occupants out into the street where they could be taken; but not all roofs were thatch, and not all thatch buildings were alight. Just below the rampart was an old, crooked building with a thatch roof, easily reached, but with a fall of perhaps fifteen feet. The thatch was thick, however, new spar-coating simply laid on the old until it piled up centuries deep. I rose to my feet, gasped at the pain in my limbs, and then launched myself at the old house.

I made a soft landing on thatch ten feet thick, dropping down on my front, limbs spread wide. From there it was an easy climb to the next building, which had a tile roof, and then I began a run along the south side of Sheep Street, jumping from one building to the next and managing to dodge around the structures that were on fire. The roofs were so well lit that my progress was much faster than it had been when I was running from Greyson’s horsemen.

Because of the light, I was able to orient myself and run as directly for my own house as all the arson permitted. Hope began to die as I saw flames licking around the familiar carved chimneys, and suddenly I felt the weight of my own limbs, my own exhaustion, the smoke burning in my throat. I slowed, and my last steps dragged across the roof tiles as despair clawed at me.

My father’s house had been set alight—hours before, to judge by what little remained. The roof and upper storeys had fallen in, and there was nothing left but embers, charred beams, and blackened brick. The fire had spread to the thatch-roofed house next door, or perhaps the other way—both had fallen in. Bodies lay before the front door of the butcher shop, and in the ruddy light I could see the dead were Aekoi reivers. My father and the apprentices, then, had given a good account of themselves before their luck had run out.

But were they still alive? The fire might have forced the defenders into the street, where they could have been captured.

I didn’t believe it. In my heart I knew that my father would have fought to the end, wielding his pollaxe and calling on the Netweaving God.

Still, I needed to know. I was still standing in stunned stupefaction when I heard, a short distance away, the clash of arms and a shrieking of whistles.

My father, I thought, might still be alive and fighting. At once I was running along the tiles, leaped over Princess Street at a narrow place, then charged on.

My heart gave a leap as I saw a group of my countrymen, armed with pikes and swords and whatever other tools they could find, pushing toward the East Gate. There were men and women both in the crowd, thirty or forty all told, all shouting, all driving a crowd of Aekoi before them.

Shrieks went up from Aekoi whistles. They were calling to other reivers, bringing them to the fight.

I knew the band had to move quickly or they’d be overwhelmed. I cast about frantically for a weapon, then saw the roof tiles under my feet.

I heaved up a tile, threw it at one of the Aekoi, and missed. The second one missed as well. The third struck a reiver between the shoulder blades and knocked him down long enough for the defenders to reach him and trample him into the brick street.

In the meantime, the whistles shrilled, and the reivers gathered, at first hovering around the resisters, firing arrows from their short bows; but then, as their numbers rose, rushing in with swords and short naval pikes. I hurled more roof tiles, but the pirates were swarming in, the resisters’ advance had slowed to a crawl, and I felt a rising despair clutch at my vitals.

Then I looked up from levering another roof tile, and I saw one of the reivers standing on the roof across the road, aiming an arrow directly at me. I gave a startled leap just as the pirate loosed his missile, and the arrow missed me by inches, struck the tiles, and bounded off into the dark.

The pirate reached for another arrow, and I scrambled away, over the ridgepole and into the shelter of a bulky brick chimney. There I found myself staring right into the startled face of one of the reivers come to the call of the whistles. In the light of the flaming city I could see the reiver’s gold complexion, the bottle of incendiary fluid used to fire thatch, the quilted leather jacket, a hard leather cap with flaps tied down over the ears, and the curved bone-and-sinew bow in his hand.

I smashed the reiver in the face with a fist. I felt the impact jarring up to my shoulder, and the pirate went down in a tangle of limbs. The tiles clattered beneath me. I dropped onto the man, a knee planted on his midsection, and smashed my fist into the face yet again. I batted away the hands raised in defense and kept hammering at the face until the corsair lay still, face threaded with blood. I looked for a weapon and drew a short sword from the reiver’s waist. It was badly made, its surface pitted, its cross section a T to stiffen the badly forged steel.

Still, my spirit leapt as I held the cheap sword in my hand. At last I had some means of striking back.

And then I heard tiles rattle, and I turned to see the first archer, the one who had shot at me, crossing the ridgepole twenty feet away.

The reiver drew the bow, and I skipped away in mad flight over the rooftops. Arrows whistled through the air near my head. Behind me I could hear the band of survivors dying, baffled by packs of invaders as the red stag had been by Sir Stanley’s hounds.

Other archers saw me and fired, and I ran, carrying the useless sword, until I could see no more Aekoi silhouettes on the rooftops, and then I fell gasping to the tiles. I could hear no more fighting, no sounds of whistles, only the crackling of flame and the sigh of wind. Swirls of ash flew over me, and the smell of burning clogged my throat.

After a short, bleak eternity, I dragged myself to my feet again, sought the shelter of a chimney, and looked about me. In my flight from the archers I had taken no bearings, and now that I peered around a crow-stepped cornice, I found myself overlooking Scarcroft Square.

I ghosted forward to the cornice to get a better view, and peered through the ivy that massed over the building’s front. In the light of torches and burning buildings, I saw that the square had been filled with a vast mob of prisoners, all forced to sit or crawl by the reivers who stalked among them with swords and whips. The prisoners were all women and children, many only partly dressed, and they were in a continual, horrible, hobbling motion, as if the square were occupied by a flock of crippled lambs, none able to lie still, none permitted to rise. A constant sobbing and wailing hung in the air—no individual voice could be heard, but only the ululating rise and fall of a massed lament.

I realized where I was—atop the hall of the Honorable and Worshipfull Companie of Fullers, Scourers, and Stretchers, one of the wool guilds that flaunted its wealth and position on the square. Many was the time that my younger self had climbed its ivy-covered facade, pretending to be Sir Brigham of Hookton climbing the Tower of Doleful Visage, or Antinius leading the imperial storming party over the walls of the capital of the Felerine Republic, thus ending the Fifty Years’ War.

Antinius, I remembered, who was an Aekoi general, and who had led his men over the walls and into a sack, a sack such as the one I now witnessed. And yet Antinius had been a great hero, and the boy I had been wanted nothing so much as to emulate him.

For a brief, intense moment, I hated Antinius, all heroes, and my own younger self. By what right had I evaded death or capture? Because I was clever? Because a milkmaid had loved me?

If I were truly clever, I told myself, I would have saved my family.

I glanced around and saw the eastern sky already pale with the approaching dawn. The silhouettes of archers prowled the rooftops, and I knew they would be far too dangerous in full daylight. I needed to hide.

I did not particularly doubt my ability on that score. I knew the city far better than the reivers—there would be some alley, some courtyard, some alcove where I would escape notice.

And then I recalled a place only a few yards below my feet. The guild hall was covered in ivy, except for some niches with statues of celebrated patrons of the guild. Above the entrance was a portico with a pitched roof, and behind the pitched roof was a deep niche that had once held a statue of old King Emmius. But the ivy that draped the hall kept falling over the niche and obscuring the statue, and the obscurity was deemed an insult to royal dignity. The statue had been moved into the guild banqueting hall, where toasts could be offered in the good King’s memory; and the ivy was allowed to obscure the niche completely.

When I was a boy, the niche had seemed a great cavern, with the ivy leaves pouring over it like water over a weir. It was shadowed, private, and completely invisible, at least until the ivy turned yellow in the winter and began to die back.

And more important than anything else, it would give me a view of everything below. I still did not know the fate of my family, and if I saw any of them in the hands of the reivers, I would know to try to raise a ransom.

I peered far out over the cornice to make sure no one was looking in my direction, and saw no faces raised to view me. I rolled over the cornice and dropped down the front of the building. It was far easier to climb down the ivy than it had been to climb the courses of brick, and within a few seconds, I passed through the green curtain into the niche. There I gave way to exhaustion, dropped to the floor, and slumped against the wall, my useless sword dropping from my fingers; and as the cries and moans of the captives echoed in the small chamber, I slowly, one teardrop after another, let my hope slip away.

* * *

I did not sleep, but I fell into a kind of waking trance that had every quality of nightmare. I watched the Aekoi as they went about the business of sacking a city—and business it was, for all was aimed at generating profit for the attackers. Loot was brought in sacks or carts from all quarters of the city, and piled in the center of the square, around the fountain and its allegorical statues. The guild halls and town hall were pillaged for plate and other valuables—even King Emmius was carried off. None of the plunder was taken by individual reivers; it was all collected to be distributed later. One reiver who appeared laughing, dressed comically in a bolt of valuable silk, was viciously clouted by an officer and the silk taken away.

Weapons were taken to the New Castle, where the enemy commander had apparently established his headquarters. The pigs that roamed free on Ethlebight’s streets were killed and butchered, and the meat taken to the castle. Other food was also brought into the castle, and soon the scent of cooking wafted from the gates.

New groups of prisoners were harried into the square. All bedraggled, some wounded, they were kicked into place and then ignored. Punishment was savage if any protested, or if any so much as tried to stand. The prisoners were otherwise not molested—their captors were far too busy sucking the city dry of wealth.

The women and children were herded right before me on the west side of the square, and the men on the far eastern side, behind the piles of plunder, their position partly obscured by the half-built wooden theater. The men were all shackled, but only a few of the women had been chained. Perhaps the reivers had succeeded beyond their dreams and run out of fetters, or maybe they considered women less prone to rebellion if they had the lives of their children to consider.

My body was a mass of cramp and pain. I was desperately thirsty. My torn fingers oozed blood. Exhaustion reached rude, clammy hands into my mind and tore away everything but despair.

Harsh commands, barks of laughter, and crude jokes echoed up from the reivers. In the grammar school, I had been taught the classical Aekoi authors, all famed for their balanced, elegant rhetoric—I had learned nothing like the crudities that came from the square, that sounded little more than the yapping of terriers.

At noon, the reivers were called by groups into the castle for their meal. The captives were given nothing. And after that began the complex business of moving the captives and the loot out of the city.

The women and children went first, kicked to their feet and marched to the square’s central fountain, where they were allowed to drink. Each was then given a bag of loot, a bolt of costly fabric, or a basket of food, and marched away in the direction of the River Gate.

I sat up, wringing my torn hands in anxiety as I peered through the ivy in hopes of viewing my mother or sisters. I failed to see them, but I felt a cold spear enter my heart as I saw Annabel Greyson bent weeping over a bolt of cloth as she shuffled along in a nightgown and bare feet. With her I saw other young women I had last seen gaily clad as Mermaids, along with their mothers and sisters. I saw girls I’d flirted with at market stalls, young boys I’d seen running in the streets, dignified grandmothers I’d met at the temple or the Fane. And I saw Tavinda, the Aekoi woman who’d always bargained with my father for a better price, leaning on the arm of her concubine daughter, both dressed in soiled finery, their captivity a demonstration that the Aekoi had no objection to enslaving their own race.

By the time the last of the women had passed, my heart had been wrung dry of sorrow. I was as bereft of feeling as the stone and cold brick that shaped my hiding place. I could only watch, observe, and keep a mute tally of the tragedies below.

After the women and children had been marched away, the men were given the same treatment, save that their burdens were heavier. They shuffled along, chains ringing, backs bent. I saw aldermen, the Mayor, and the Lord Warden Scrope, who with his band of royal troops had so signally failed in his duty to defend the city. Lawyer Dacket shuffled along with his two sons. I recognized many of this year’s Warriors of the Sea, and though I didn’t see Kevin, I saw Kevin’s father, the Mercer Spellman. I saw monks in their robes, their sacred character having proved no boundary to enslavement. I saw Anthony Greyson, the wrathful father who had pursued me the previous night. Greyson was badly battered, having resisted captivity, and I found no joy in this enemy brought low.

The long, anguished procession took hours. By late afternoon, the square was empty save for the corsairs, who carried away whatever loot remained. Last of all, the reivers carried away the god Pastas, his azure skin and green hair shining in the sun as his statue was carried from the Fane to join the Thousand Gods of the Aekoi.

As the eastern sky began to darken, trumpets blew from the New Castle—a recheat, I thought—to signal any reivers remaining in the city to depart. In armor that glittered of captive gold, the commander marched away, shadowed by half a dozen black flags, and was followed by a few scurrying stragglers.

After which I was left to emerge from my cave into the new, ravaged city, a new world that smelled of cinders, of death, and of blackest misery.