Wartorn Obliteration

BRYCK (5)

At that moment of ultimate crisis, when the soldiers spotted them atop that roof, he, curiously enough, had only one concern in mind—Quentis's safety.

Deo had fired off one bolt from his crossbow. Bryck watched as he slapped the weapon to his shoulder a second time, a fresh bolt in place, grinning as he worked the trigger.

"Got him!"

No matter how accurate a shot it had been, Bryck noted silently, it couldn't make nearly enough of a difference. Not with the number of armed Felk in the street below, now alerted to their position above.

Quentis was by Bryck's side. Radstac, sword in hand, had joined Deo. The others of the Broken Circle, including Aquint and Nievze, had made their escape off the far lip of the rooftops, Bryck saw with a distant shudder of relief. It was of course crucial that the blood magic wizard got away, so to perform his spell.

But still Bryck's only real priority was getting Quentis out of danger.

Below, the soldiers were charging toward the buildings that held the Circle's rooms and the craft workshops, looking for access to the roofs. They would find it. The patrol was very large, bigger than the entire original garrison put together. Aquint had been correct; reinforcements had obviously been Far Moved to Callah.

Also in the streets were the Callahans that the soldiers had turned out from their homes. Several of these were prone on the ground. Bryck saw blood.

It'll be worse than last time? Gelshiri had wondered.

The last time the Felk had run rampant through the city, it had been because of Bryck's inadvertent murder of a garrison soldier. This time a Felk mage of great political importance lay dead. These soldiers had probably received their orders from high up the chain of command. They wouldn't be concerned with the niceties Governor Jesile had tried to observe while occupying this city for the Felk.

Callah's streets would be wet with blood before sunrise.

These thoughts flashed through Bryck's mind, not eclipsing his concerns for Quentis's safety. He seized her hand. Her returning grip was strong.

Deo's crossbow gave another sharp twang, and another Felk soldier dropped in the street.

"We're going to run!" Bryck said to Radstac and Deo.

Radstac was studying the terrain below. "Too late," she said, clearly and calmly.

And it was, of course. He wanted to say some last thing to these two; both had been instrumental in this desperate and supremely important Broken Circle operation. But Deo was busy with another bolt, and Radstac wouldn't waste her attention listening.

"Thank you," he whispered. It was lost in the general tumult.

He turned, with Quentis, and they raced across the rooftops, over onto those atop the shops. The Felk clogged this street as well. Bryck hunkered low, pulling down Quentis, then dropped to his knees. His fingers clawed the squared sections of a particular roof.

"What're you doing?" Quentis asked, imitating his actions anyway, fingertips probing the edges of the squares.

"Looking for a trap door." Bryck was scrabbling hard now, trying not to let his fear overwhelm him. The roar from below was growing louder, more violent. He hoped the others were making good their escape.

Suddenly his fingers found a groove, and he pried upward. The hatch came free. No hinge, just a loose segment of the roof. Beneath was an invitingly dark hole. No doubt the Felk would break into all these shops, but maybe they could hide themselves down there somewhere, somehow—

"What is that?" Quentis asked.

Bryck lifted his head from the hole. The turmoil was louder still, and it had taken on some new quality, it seemed. Quentis, on one knee, was trying to peer cautiously over the roof edge.

"Be careful," Bryck said, grabbing for her again.

She instead took his hand and drew him near. She was not one to panic, he knew, and in that moment he appreciated that trait fully.

Together they looked down on the street. The Felk soldiers were no longer alone.

Bryck felt a wave of such strong emotion that at first he was wholly unable to identify it. His eyes widened, and his breath went still in his chest. His fingers tightened around Quentis's hand, until his bones ground against hers.

They came in a gathering wave. Bryck saw individuals joining the mass, and by the time they actually came into contact with the patrol, the numbers were substantial. They brandished improvised weaponry, mostly objects that would serve as bludgeons. The added noise was the general cry of battle, a high taut note, a collective voice of frustration and fury. These people had suffered enough under their occupiers. They had withstood the conquest of their city, and they had acquiesced to the laws of their conquerors. But surrender wasn't enough apparently. Tonight the Felk had come once more into their homes, and the violation and violence was, finally, too much.

And so the Callahans were rising.

Even with these numbers they weren't going to have an easy time of it. The Felk were professionally armed. They were troops drawn possibly from Felk itself or some other occupied city, but as likely had been culled from the active ranks in the field. These soldiers almost certainly had combat experience of some sort. It was unlikely many of these Callahans did.

The Felk cut into them, without hesitation or mercy. Bryck was still holding's Quentis's hand, still overwhelmed with feeling. But what was it he was feeling?

"Should we help?" Quentis was asking.

Pride, Bryck realized. He felt pride for these people. At long last they were doing as he'd hoped. He had created for them a fictional revolution, one that had become, by increments, real. Now these people of Callah were giving it its final authenticity.

Yet even under the sway of such powerful emotions, Bryck's prime concern was still Quentis's safety.

"We've done enough," he said, pulling her toward the opening in the roof. An arrow or crossbow bolt streaked past her shoulder, perilously close.

Quentis dropped her legs into the hole, swung by her hands planted on either side and shot her eyes up at him. "You're coming, too, aren't you?"

"I am." Another missile whisked past, just overhead.

She disappeared into the dark. He barely heard her landing over the uproar. He didn't have time for a look back at Radstac and Deo. He just went down into the very relative safety of the empty shop below, hoping fervently that these Callahans had success with their uprising.

The Isthmus, Bryck later learned, became once again a very large place that night. As large as it had been before the advent of Far Movement and Far Speak magic. Distances were once more their normal and natural scope. If three days of horseback travel were required to traverse two points, then that was just how it had to be done once again. No more portals. No more wizards to make them appear.

However, Bryck and many others in the city of Callah had concerns of a more immediate nature.

For a quarter-lune the fight for Callah's freedom splashed blood into the streets. The patrol that Bryck and Quentis saw that first night weren't the only Felk reinforcements transported into the city. Quite a large company had been ordered in, to recover Abraxis's bag of blood samples and to crush the evident rebel element in the city. But now no further reinforcements would arrive; and no Felk could be Far Moved to safety.

As the uprising carried on, growing bloodier by the watch, it also drew more participants. More Callahans joined their fellows. They saw an opportunity to be rid of the Felk. They saw the moment of their revenge against their oppressors. Some no doubt simply succumbed to the frenzy of the bloodthirsty spectacle.

The Callahans fought the Felk, neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street. The natives grew more organized. As they recovered weapons from the fallen soldiers, they became better armed. It was war. It was a second chance. Callah had fallen too easily the first time to these invaders from the north.

There were no more curfews, no more public floggings, no rules of any kind that these occupiers could enforce any longer. Eventually the Felk retreated toward the Registry, and eventually the rebels—so many now—surrounded that building from every side. A siege ensued.

Rumors circulated wildly in the city that the Felk, everywhere throughout the Isthmus, had suffered a crippling blow. Their wizards, all of them and all at once, had been struck mysteriously with death. No one could say where the rumor had originated, but it was evident that no Far Movement magicians were currently operating within Callah.

With the surviving soldiers barricaded in the Registry and veritable droves of Callahans encircling the site, Governor Jesile prudently announced the garrison's surrender. He came to a window to do so. The mob hurled stones and obscenities. They had several times tried unsuccessfully to set fire to the combustible parts of the building.

Despite the furor and carnage, Bryck and Quentis had little trouble staying out of the chaos after that first night. They had hunkered there inside that shut up shop, listening to the violence outside, holding tightly to each other. Time became fluid, imprecise, and that ambiguity was its own special sort of fright.

But the time did pass, and the battle did drift away, and the Felk didn't trample their way into the shop. Bryck and Quentis stayed there until morning, until the primitive comforts of light and warmth returned. When they emerged, they saw the bodies, smelled the blood. Radstac and Deo weren't among the corpses. Bryck found himself thinking suddenly and very vividly of Setix, the man who had changed his mind about joining the Broken Circle and who Bryck had ordered killed. He couldn't regret the necessity of that act, but it was one more death, and there was so much death.

He wiped his eyes. Revenge against the Felk. For so long it had been the only motive urging his life forward, allowing him to go on living, rather than choosing to join Aaysue and his children. It was a good motive. The Felk deserved their destruction. But a better reason for living was perhaps the desire to live for something, for someone.

He and Quentis went to ground. And stayed there.

Later they learned of the rebel actions against the Felk, of the standoff at the Registry. Someone emerged from the mobs surrounding the building, someone of calm and reason and extreme pragmatism, and a negotiation between the two parties followed. What resulted was Jesile's agreement to submit himself to a beheading, with the understanding that the remaining soldiers would lay down their arms and be treated to thorough floggings, after which they would be set free.

Jesile, the erstwhile Felk governor of Callah, was by all accounts quietly heroic about his fate. The crowds that gathered to see him dispatched didn't cheer, either before or after the deed.

When later on the bloody-backed soldiers were turned loose, the people of Callah found themselves faced with the business of ruling their own city once more. It was, to the surprise of many, a daunting challenge.

It was at this time that Bryck and Quentis at last emerged from hiding. They walked the streets of the stunned city. People were trying to resume their normal lives, but for the lunes since war had come, the concept of normalcy had shifted radically. Callah was still an isolated city. They had no news of the war. They had learned from the former garrison soldiers that the wizards in residence at the Registry had indeed all died suddenly and inexplicably.

These Callahans were of course the dregs left behind after the Felk conscription efforts, the very young and the oldish. It now fell to them to reestablish a local government. Foodstuffs still had to be transported in from the city-state's surrounding farmland. A police force needed to be recruited. The Callahan economy had to be stabilized, and the Felk-issued scrip eliminated.

Bryck didn't involve himself in any of these matters. He accompanied Quentis back to her home, where she'd lived with her cousin Ondak before joining the Broken Circle. The house had been broken into and ransacked, but it hadn't been burned, as some parts of Callah had. Ondak wasn't there. She and Bryck settled in together, cleaning the place up, and waited and watched as the city reclaimed itself.

Bryck had noted the Broken Circle's sigil freshly drawn and slashed on many surfaces throughout the city. He heard also songs being sung, those revolutionary verses that Deo and Radstac had been spreading in the taverns.

There were lean times in the days that followed. Irregular supplies of food meant hunger, and that led to panic in some, violence in others. The new self-regulating Callahan government had to deal with these problems. Bryck and Quentis merely survived, concerning themselves with their small personal needs.

They eventually met up with Aquint, who, it turned out, had been the one to negotiate the garrison's surrender at the Registry. Cat was with him, naturally, and the two were busily involved in some enterprise that neither would speak of directly.

"Have you seen Ondak?" Quentis asked.

"No," Aquint said. "But I know where Radstac is."

"Nievze was able to cast his spell, evidently," Bryck said.

Aquint nodded. "We found a safe place that night. I watched him. It was... fascinating. It drained him almost to death. I wonder if its effect was as widespread as he claimed."

"I have to believe it was. I think we all have to believe that."

They didn't talk any further about the Broken Circle. Aquint planned to remain in Callah. If Bryck and Quentis intended to do the same, they would all have to meet for a drink some evening, Aquint said. Then they parted.

Bryck and Quentis sought out Radstac at the room she'd taken. Her left leg was bandaged, but if the wound was causing her pain, she didn't show it.

"Deo's dead," she said in that hard flat voice of hers. She seemed indifferent to Bryck and Quentis's company. "He fought with enthusiasm, and he died with his eyes open. I'll be going south in a few days. When I reach Petgrad, I'll tell his family about him."

"Then what will you do?" Bryck asked.

Radstac regarded him with eyes that were almost colorless. "Keep going south. I'm going home. I'm done with your Isthmus." Something moved underneath that accented voice, something hinting at a sorrow that might or might not have been profound. They left her there in that room.

Eventually word of the outside did reach Callah, in that way before Far Speak that news had always traveled. There was unfettered movement on Isthmus roads once again, as there hadn't been in some while. Travelers and traders and returning soldiers brought the word. The Felk war was done. The Felk themselves were done, as would-be conquerors. Their wizards were all dead, and their army had met with a mixed force of southern Isthmus militaries that had smashed the Felk at what was being called the Battle of Pegwithe Plains.

The one responsible for uniting those various armies against the Felk, the premier of Petgrad, had died in the fighting, it was said, as had the general of the Felk army. There was no reliable word of what had happened to the Felk ruler, Matokin, but he was evidently no longer in power in that northern city.

This news reached Bryck and Quentis in the same manner it did everyone else in Callah, and along with everyone else they celebrated the war's end.

Bryck found himself quite comfortable with Quentis and their living arrangements. They were lovers and, more, had settled into an easy daily rhythm with one another. It was emotional as well as physical. They had learned each other's basic predilections and day by day worked out the more niggling details of their relationship. It occurred to Bryck after Callah's major crises had been alleviated by its new government that he had no intention of leaving the city. Certainly there was no U'delph to go back to; but more than that he had a fondness for Callah now that he hadn't had before. These people had risen up against their oppressors. They had proven their character.

He went unrecognized as the leader of the Broken Circle, of course. Very few had ever seen his face, and the few original members of that group who he encountered did not give him away. People spoke of the Broken Circle often, but already these were becoming fanciful stories and romantic exaggerations, precursors of folklore.

It was generally assumed, even by the least devout, that the gods had had a hand in the war's ending. The deaths of all those wizards was surely proof of that. More, it was proof that those gods had not been on the side of the Felk.

"I'd like to ask you something," Quentis said one day. They were at home. Her old vendor cart had been lost, but she'd had a new one built. She and Bryck took turns pushing it through the streets, peddling an assortment of small wares. Callah's population had been reinvigorated by the return of the surviving native men and women who'd been conscripted into the Felk army.

Bryck was sitting comfortably in the forward room that got light through its windows in the later watches of the day. This house was snug, but he had helped make repairs to it. He was considering planting a fruit tree in the plot of dirt out front, when this encroaching winter was over.

"What's that?" he asked, turning an eye toward Quentis. He knew already by the subtly grave tone that she had something of import on her mind.

Quentis pressed her lips together thoughtfully. Her amber eyes took on a frank cast. After a moment of silence she finally asked, "What is your name?"

Bryck was dumbstruck. He had been "the Minstrel" for so long, he'd grown used to it. Yet how had he neglected to tell Quentis his actual name during this entire past lune? The thought tickled him comically, appealing to some dormant vein of humor, which had once run much nearer the surface.

He kept himself from smiling, knowing that Quentis was being quite serious.

"I am Bryck."

"Bryck?" She seemed to be tasting the name.

"Yes. Bryck of U'delph."

Those eyes blinked slowly. A glimmer came to them, and her expression shifted. "Not the playwright? Chicanery by Moonlight. Glad of Nothing. Not that Bryck of U'delph?"

"Well... yes." He felt a curious embarrassment that he couldn't quite explain to himself.

Quentis regarded him through another longer silence. At last she said, "I've always admired your work."

Now he did smile at her, with a true warmth he hadn't felt for far too long.