Shadow Gate

52

Two riders on winged horses emerged from Toskala's council hall and rose, flying, into the gathering night. In quick succession, four more emerged and galloped into the heavens in pursuit. The people crowded into Justice Square began to call and scream and argue in a clamor that made Nallo wish she could smack each one until they all shut up.

Pil was crouched beside Volias, his own face hovering just above the reeve's parted lips. Straightening, he shook his head. 'He's dead.'

'The hells!' She ran up the ramp, pushed past some idiot shrieking woman in blood-soaked merchant's robes, and stopped at the threshold, slammed by the reek of blood and the stench of death. Gagging, she backed away, and bumped into a person crowding up behind. She turned and slugged; Pil caught her arm.

'Cursed demons slaughtered them all,' she said, voice breaking on the words. 'Nothing we can do here. Let's get back to the hall.'

Pil slung Volias's corpse over his shoulder. Nallo took point, shoving down the ramp and through the crowd with vicious pleasure in seeing people flinch away. Tears washed her face. She wanted to rip someone's cursed ugly face off just for all the gods-rotted useless nattering, no one taking charge, an assembly of weak-hearted fools.

No one guarded the gate to Clan Hall, but a swarm of reeves and fawkners were streaming in and out of the lofts and buzzing in the torch-lit parade ground like bees smoked out of their hive. Seeing her and Pil, Peddo ran over.

'Ah, the hells!' he cried, but he wasn't surprised to find Volias dead.

'There's been a massacre at the council hall, demons guised as Guardians from the tales,' said Nallo. 'Then Volias just dropped dead. What's going on?'

'Bring him to the lofts.'

Inside, she smelled blood enough to make her choke. Likard ran up. He'd been weeping. Others were still crying as they wriggled aimlessly here and there like so many decapitated eels.

'Are you just always that sloppy about fixing the cursed bird's hood?' Likard shouted at her.

'What?'

Unlike the big, open barracks rooms, the lofts had separate sections and separate entrances, linked by corridors for the fawkners to move quickly from one cote to another. She ran ahead, but the side door to the loft where Tumna sheltered was already open. She staggered to a halt inside. Two young men sprawled on the floor, one headless. Tumna's feathers were stuck out in a rage, and she was still swiping at them with her talons, rolling them over as if they were toys. Her hood was crumpled in a corner, as if it had hit the wall.

'Slow down,' wheezed Likard, behind her. 'Cursed if those two hells-bitten bastards weren't hopeful fawkner's assistants at all, but agents for the cursed army, come up here to kill the eagles while everyone slept. They slaughtered Trouble and Surri in the first two lofts. When they snuck in here ready to stab Tumna and Sweet, I tell you that cursed ill-tempered raptor must have torn off her hood and skewered them. She ripped the head clean off that one. May he rot and roast and freeze in the hells.'

Tumna was alive. Exasperated, the huge raptor chirped, glaring at Nallo in the muzzy lamplight as if in complaint: thugs disturbed my night's rest! How like them!

Nallo began sobbing. Folk came up to touch her as if to make sure she wasn't a ghost, while others ran up and down the corridors to see if anyone else was sneaking around, anyone not accounted for. Murderers!

The shouting and anger and all manner of voices churned as if a storm blew through. Trouble dead. Volias dead. Surri dead, whichever eagle she was, and her reeve with her. Nallo hadn't even learned every reeve's name yet, much less figured how to tell the eagles apart.

Sweet, still hooded, shifted restlessly on her night perch, much disturbed, PIl appeared at Nallo's side.

'The hells,' he muttered, sounding very like a Hundred man. 'Alter that time Sweet pulled off her hood, I made sure to fasten it correctly. I'm glad you didn't!' He fixed his eagle with a possessive stare.

'Where's Volias?' she asked, surprised into speech by his volubility.

'At rest by the dead eagles. Him and the other reeve. What now?'

'No one's in charge! All the senior reeves are cursed dead, aren't they? After that first day, I don't think I exchanged more than twenty words with the commander, eh? "How's the training going? Ofri treating you well?"'

'Who will the others listen to?'

'How can you be so cursed calm! They're all dead. Volias just dropped dead. And those in the hall – the reeves, the council members, the cursed militiamen – they were cut down like sheep, stinking with it, and you can stand there because you're a cursed rotting outlander who doesn't know…' He took in the abuse that poured out of her until she ran out of breath and heaved, thinking she was going to retch out the boil of anger and heartbreak, but nothing came but dry sobs.

'Who will the others listen to, Nallo?' he said in the exact same tone.

She wiped her eyes. 'Peddo, maybe.'

He left.

'I'm a cursed idiot,' she said to Tumna, who looked over at the sound of her voice, probably to agree with her. 'You're the best raptor who ever lived. You know that, don't you?'

The bird tipped her head sideways, considering this statement.

'So you stay here, with your prizes. Eat them, for all I care, although their flesh will likely poison you. Ah, the hells!'

She stepped into the corridor and grabbed Likard and the fawkner next to him. 'Are there other murderers on the loose?'

'Those are the only two hired in within the last year,' said Likard. 'So likely they were sent in on purpose, don't you think? Cursed traitors. Wish I could strangle them myself.'

He seemed likely to go on in this vein, so she went back into the loft, untangled the hood, and approached Tumna, tapping the signal that made the raptor flutter back to her night perch and lower her head. But she couldn't bear to hood her. She turned to face a crowd of fawkners.

'What are you gawking at? Can you haul this rubbish out of here? It stinks!'

She remained by Tumna while others dragged away the corpses. Eiya! She hadn't believed Volias, had she? Just a cursed stupid thing to say, she'd thought, a crude form of arm-twisting: If your eagle dies, you die.

Tears flowing, she circled the compound but didn't find Pil. The commander's cote was empty, the old reeve who attended her sobbing so hard on the porch that he didn't notice Nallo come or go. Folk were poking spears into every hidey-hole and dark corner, making sure no one was sneaking around to strike again. Someone had set a dozen furious, frightened fawkners and assistants to guard the gate. They pointed her toward the stairs that led down into the city.

A cataract of sound poured up from Toskala. Rubbing against it in a chatter that irritated her even more, the refugees mobbing Justice Square waved their hands in the air to no purpose, jabbering and complaining and then having the nerve to yell at her as she elbowed them aside to get to the overlook. A pair of lamps hanging from posts illuminated the balcony that jutted out over the cliff face. She identified Pil's topknot. The two other reeves had very short hair, and the fourth person wore a firefighter's brimmed leather helmet and fitted leather coat. They made room for her at the railing.

They stared over the city, delineated by torches flaring in lines that snaked along avenues as the army spread out to overtake the population piece by piece. In one quarter, a fire burned, so far confined to a single block. A pair of guardsman stood at the edge of lamplight, posted at the gate marking the head of the stairs. All traffic in either direction had ceased.

'How did they block the stairs?' Nallo asked finally.

Kesta set a hand over hers on the railing. 'Some old trap from ancient days. It made a terrible noise. Eiya! A lot of people on the steps died when it was sprung.'

'Captain Ressi did that?'

Her usually lively face looked drawn and aged in lamplight. 'Neh. Captain Ressi was at council hall. A sergeant sprang it. Killed himself in the process. Knew he was going to, I think.'

'What do we do now?' asked the fire captain. He was surprisingly young, with a short-clipped beard and an annoying habit of

drumming his fingers on the railing as he started talking. 'The senior militia captains are dead in the council hall, or trapped in the city and surely dead by now.'

'You are a captain,' said Pil.

'Eiya! Through my mother's Green Sun connections, if you want to know the truth. I was so cursed proud of myself, wasn't I? Riding my gelding through the streets, strutting about with my fire hook.' He glanced at Peddo, then away. 'My kinfolk sent me up here three days ago to square the accounts on the various hall storehouses. This much water in the cisterns. That much oil. So many tey of rice. I tell you, I think they knew. I fear they sent me up here to keep me out of harm's way, curse them!' He began sobbing. 'Gods-rotted traitors!'

They stepped away from him, and he looked over indignantly.

'I wasn't in on it! As soon as the trouble erupted, I secured the storehouses and cisterns with what firefighters remain up here, in case any of this crowd decides to grab what they can.'

'Why come over here to the stairs, then?' asked Peddo. 'Since it's the only way up or down from this rock besides flying, or the baskets?'

The young man gestured helplessly, a sweep of his arm that took in the city. Overhead, stars glittered in silence; below, Toskala roared as its thousands ran or fought or hid, or simply wailed and grieved. The wind blustered, but like them it could do nothing but witness.

'What's the point of staying?' asked Kesta. 'We've lost.'

'What's ever the point of staying?' said Nallo, thinking of the day she had walked into a strange village to marry a man she'd never met, to fulfill a contract other hands had sealed in her name. 'To say you can. To show you will.'

'And what the hells does it matter, Nallo, when those demons can fly? The steps are blocked, but the demons can come back any time they want.'

'Maybe so, but if they'd wanted to kill us all, then why didn't they?'

'The winged ones carried no weapons,' added Pil, 'but the ones who died, died in blood. So then who stabbed them? Not the demons.'

'A good point,' said Peddo, smiling wanly at Pil, who blushed and looked away.

'Traitors stabbed them!' said the fire captain hoarsely. 'Any of us might be a traitor!'

'The hells you say!' snapped Nallo. 'I'm no gods-rotted traitor. And I'm not cursed ready to give up, either.'

'We need a captain,' said Pil. 'If we mean to resist. This rock is a good fort. If we can protect ourselves against demons, and ration water and food.'

'And throw the cursed traitors to their death!' screamed the fire captain with a howl of outraged grief.

Distant voices on Justice Square echoed his cries, and the guards at the stairs stirred restlessly, looking scared.

Nallo slapped the fire captain right across the face. That shut him up. Probably with his soft skin and well-kept hands he'd never done a day's worth of real work in his silk-wearing, pampered life.

'Do you think you're the only cursed person who's suffered? We either give up now, or we take stock of our situation and then we cursed well decide what we mean to do! I don't want to give up!'

The image of her husband lying dead in the road with the flies buzzing in and out of his gaping mouth sprang so vividly into her mind that she began to cry. He had stayed behind with the other men to hold off the army while the women and children ran into the forest to hide. Dazed from a day of hiding in the brush, Jerad and little Zi had not truly understood what had happened to their father. Avisha had trembled so close to hysterics that Nallo recognized only now how much strength it had taken the girl to suck it up and keep going for the sake of the little ones. And they'd done it. They'd walked away from the ruins of a life they could never have back, and by sheer stubbornness they had found other shelter. Not a safe place, for maybe there weren't any safe places left. But a decent place, a good place. A place they could find pride in.

'I didn't give up before, and the gods know I'm cursed well not going to give up now. What if we can hold this rock? Won't that give hope to others?'

'Who will be captain?' repeated Pil.

'That's right,' she said fiercely, looking at each in turn: the fire captain still stricken and likely to break out in a whine; Peddo

exhausted but thoughtful; Kesta twisted between despair and hope. Pil as always so calm that you didn't know whether to love him or shake him to see if he would ever yelp. 'We need a commander, someone who knows Toskala and the other halls. Someone who has allies. Someone who might actually know what he's doing, even if he is a vain-hearted and insufferably smug horse's ass. I say, we send word to Argent Hall. To Marshal Joss.'