"I"m not going to waste time thinking, and don"t you do it either. Put all the sentries on the alert and give them torches. Get the reserve archers awake and have them ready to man the walls."
"You-"
"I"m going to take the mounted guards and head for the palace. I"ll pick up the extra men I need on the way. Oh, load a dozen or so of our tar barrels into a wagon. I"ll want to take them with me."
"I-".
"You"ll stay here. If anything"s happening at the palace, it may still be just a diversion. There could be an attack planned on the walls, if we send everybody off to the palace. So you"ll stay here and take care of the walls."
Blade had forgotten he was addressing the heir-apparent of Morina and wouldn"t have cared if he"d remembered. He was almost sure something was badly wrong at the palace. He was absolutely sure that if it was, minutes would be precious, and wasting time in being polite a crime.
Fortunately Zemun was too good a soldier to worry about manners in an emergency. He nodded. "I"ll have them start loading the barrels at once, Lord Blade." He looked down inside the wall and opened his mouth to shout to the nearest man. Blade pulled him back and whispered fiercely in his ear.
"Don"t shout yet. We don"t want the whole city awake and in a panic. That could be part of the Wolves" plan."
If there was an enemy plan, thought Blade as he headed for the nearest stairs to the ground. He still couldn"t be sure whether he"d be saving Morina by sounding the alert or just making a complete a.s.s of himself. However, he could survive looking foolish better than Morina could survive an attack by the Wolves.
He went down the stairs two at a time, sprang on to his heuda"s back without touching the stirrups, and galloped off toward the quarters of the mounted guards. Behind him he heard the rumble of barrels being rolled across the cobblestones and the creaking as they were loaded into the wagon. The tar barrels were intended to provide light on the walls, and also to be dropped on Wolves. Tonight they might have other uses.
During the night, the mounted guards kept their heudas saddled and ready to go. Half were always awake and the others slept in their armor with their weapons close at hand. All Blade had to do was ride up, dismount, and call softly into the guardroom. The guards came swarming out, the ones who"d been sleeping only a little behind their comrades. All seventy-five were mounted in a few minutes. Blade sent some off to alert more of Morina"s defenders and led the rest toward the palace.
The streets of Morina wound and twisted, and houses with high-peaked roofs crowded close on either side. Blade caught only rare glimpses of the bell tower. The third time he saw it, the bell chamber was lit up again, more brightly than before. He watched until the roofs once more cut off his view, but saw nothing moving up there. He did see the ducal banner, now visible around one corner of the tower. It was hanging as limply as a wet handkerchief. No wind had blown out the lanterns.
The clattering hooves of the mounted guards" heudas on the cobblestones brought heads popping out of windows as they pa.s.sed. Blade called out rea.s.surances.
"Stay in your houses., everybody, and keep your doors locked. Get your weapons out if you have any, but leave things to the soldiers for the moment. We"ll warn you all the moment there"s any danger."
At last they came out into a slightly broader street between high-walled n.o.blemen"s houses. A hundred feet farther on, the street led them into the square in front of the ducal palace. Its walls rose thirty feet above the square, grim, ancient blocks of dark stone. The gate itself looked like a small castle. The torches burning on the gate towers, the sentries marching back and forth; helmeted heads visible above the battlements, the lights in the palace buildings beyond the wall-everything was perfectly normal.
No, not everything. At the foot of the wall lay a sprawled body. It wore the clothing of one of the palace guards, except for the helmet. The torches above cast enough light for Blade to see a dark stain on the pavement under the body.
Blade reined his heuda to a stop and as he did the bolt from a crossbow whistled past his head. A second threw up sparks from the pavement, and a third drilled his heuda through the skull. Blade leaped clear as the dying animal toppled, landed on hands and knees, and leaped to his feet shouting orders.
Battle was joined now, and there was no more reason to be quiet. Blade roared out his orders in a voice that could be heard clear across the square. "Wolves in the palace! The duke has betrayed us. Mounted guards-back, and block the street. Get the tar barrels into a line and light them!"
His arms danced wildly. "You--ride to Lord Zemun. Tell him to get the torches lit and man the walls.
"You-ride back to the men coming up behind us. Send them around to block all the streets leading out from the palace. Have them use wagons, furniture, barrels, tear up the cobblestones if they have to. We"ve got to surround the palace and keep it surrounded!"
More bolts sailed down from the gate to punctuate Blade"s remarks. One struck a guard in the arm, nearly knocking him out of his saddle. He cried out, but with surprise and rage more than pain.
"You, you, you-ride through the streets and wake up the people. Tell them the Wolves are in the city and must be stopped. Tell them to turn out, block the streets, light torches and be ready to fight for their lives." Blade"s mind went back to Winston Churchill"s call of 1940, when Britain faced a German invasion. "Remember, you can always take one with you."
The messengers clattered off into the darkness on their various missions, pursued by more bolts from the gate. The rest dismounted, some to lead away the heudas, others to unload the tar barrels and pile them across the street. Still others broke down the doors of nearby houses and started dragging furniture out into the street to add to the barricade. At first men shouted angrily at the invasion of their homes. Then they heard what was happening and came swarming out to join the mounted guards at the barricade.
They came in their nightclothes or in no clothes at all. Some came with axes and spears, others with improvised clubs, chair legs, or even stones. Some climbed up to top-floor windows and got ready to throw things down on the heads of the Wolves. None of them seemed to have any idea of how to fight a battle except killing all the Wolves they could find. Blade had seldom commanded a stranger or more ragged army, but he"d never commanded one as eager to fight!
Now Blade could hear a growing uproar behind the walls of the palace. Heudas stamped and cried out, men shouted orders, a rumble of voices rose and fell. The Wolves were gathering there in strength, but they seemed to be taking their time about coming out to attack. Blade wondered if they despised the Morinans that much. Surely they could see the barricades rising all around the palace! Did they think they had all night?
Then silence fell behind the palace walls. In the next moment the main gate crashed open. In the moment after that what seemed like a thousand Wolves came charging out of the palace on their heudas.
At the head of the column was a ma.s.s of leaders in full armor, riding almost shoulder to shoulder, their lances raised, pennons fluttering, armor gleaming in the torchlight. They cantered out into the square, the lances dipped, and the whole ma.s.s came thundering down on Blade"s force. They were a terrifying sight-a ma.s.sed charge by armored heavy cavalry always is. As he dashed forward with a torch to ignite the tar barrels, Blade wondered if he"d be alone when he turned around.
The torch fell, the tar blazed up, and a wall of flame rose between Blade and the charging Wolves. He dashed back for the cover of the barricade, vaulted it, and shouted to his men. "Men with spears and lances-line up and hold them out in front of you. The rest-gather on the flanks and the rear. No prisoners!"
Then the Wolves reached the wall of flame, and Blade stopped shouting because he could no longer make himself heard.
The Wolves tried hard to rein in and stay out of the flames. But the first rank, the second, and some of the third were too close, and the sheer weight of their comrades behind them pushed them into the fire. Men and heudas came down like falling trees, and all the screams blended together into one ghastly uproar.
Blade saw a Wolf leader plunge to the ground at his feet and start to get up. Then a pain-maddened heuda reared above him and brought both front hooves down on his chest The armor caved in like tinfoil and the man died writhing and gasping, unable to cry out.
Another Wolf landed face down in the thickest of the burning tar. By some miracle he got to his feet and came lurching toward Blade, flames shooting out from the c.h.i.n.ks of his armor as the tar ate away his flesh, screaming with every step he took. Three spears jabbed the man in the chest, knocking him over. Blade knelt over the fallen man and thrust his dagger through the eyes-lit of the helmet to end the screaming.
A man in a nightshirt seemed to go mad, rushing past the line of spears waving an ax. His clothing caught fire, but he kept on, straight into the middle of the Wolves. "For Magra, for Magra, for Magra!" he howled, as the flames charred his flesh and the Wolves" swords bit into it. Then his ax came down, sweeping a man-at-arms out of the saddle, and both fell dead. Magra was avenged.
Dead or dying men and heudas piled up along the wall of flame, writhing and twisting, filling the air with screams and the overpowering stench of burning flesh. A few of the men-at-arms unlimbered crossbows and sent stray bolts whistling into the ranks of the defenders. The archers were shooting blind, though, and did little damage.
At last the bodies piled up high enough to make a clear path through the flames at one end. The Wolves turned toward it, found they could not force their heudas over the bodies, drew back, and milled around, apparently uncertain what to do next. Blade wished he had about fifty archers, and thought of sending a message to ask for some from the walls. He decided against it. The Wolves here made a tempting target but it was still too soon to risk stripping the walls.
As he watched the Wolves milling around, a suspicion grew in Blade"s mind and slowly turned into a certainty. The Wizard was not here. Perhaps he was not in the besieging army at all, but certainly he was nowhere within sight of this force of Wolves. He was not seeing what was going on, either by view-ball or with his own eyes. So he could not give them any orders. Without the orders they"d always had from their master, the orders that had so often saved them from having to think for themselves, the Wolf leaders could not lead. Without the Wizard the Wolves might not be toothless, but they certainly seemed witless. They could march, burn a countryside, set up a siege camp. They could not fight a pitched battle against opponents who fought back, thought for themselves, and could spring sudden surprises!
It was hard for Blade to believe anything else. The Wizard had fought in many battles, or at least knew how they should be fought. If he"d been giving orders to these Wolves, they would not have waited so long to come out of the palace. They would not have charged blindly straight at the wall of flame and a barricade that might conceal anything. They would not be milling around now like a flock of sheep without a leader.
Morina was going to win.
"Morina will win!" Blade roared. "Morina will win! The Wizard does not lead the Wolves, and they cannot lead themselves! Stand, men of Morina, and from this night on you will be the masters of the Wizard"s Wolves! Stand, kill, and be free!"
"Stand!"
"Kill the Wolves!"
"This is the night of our freedom!"
The cries rose behind Blade, until they were as loud as the screams had been. The surviving Wolf leaders started scrambling down from their heudas, shouting to the men-at-arms to do the same. Holding their lances out in front of them like pikes, the leaders began crowding across the piled bodies, the men-at-arms behind them.
Now the Wolves" archers could no longer fire without risk of hitting their own comrades. A messenger ran up to Blade and shouted in his ear. The other streets were all barricaded; did the Lord Blade wish some of the men there to come around to meet the Wolves here?
"No. We can hold them for the time being. Stay where you are. You"ll have your share of fighting before the night"s over, don"t worry."
The messenger dashed off. Blade sheathed his sword and bent to pick up an intricately engraved battle ax, fallen from the hand of a Wolf leader. He raised it high and the light of the burning tar flamed across the polished blue steel.
"Men of Morina!" he shouted, and then another rallying cry from Home Dimension"s warfare sprang to his mind. "Men of Morina! They shall not pa.s.s!" Blade whirled the ax over his head, then sent it whining toward the shaft of a Wolf"s lance. The lance split in two, the point rang on the cobblestones, and Blade sprang into the gap it left to close with the Wolf.
The Wolf leaders were fully armored and Blade was not. With both sides on foot that was an advantage for Blade. The Wolf leaders had to move eighty pounds of steel with every step they took. Blade carried less than a third that much. He stormed through the ranks of the Wolf leaders as though he was the Wolf and they the sheep. His ax whirled, whined, and smashed down with sparks, the clang of splitting armor, and the indescribable sounds of shattering bones and tearing flesh.
The Wolf leaders tried to surround Blade, but the gap was so narrow and they were so tightly packed together he could block them completely. One Wolf leader did get around Blade, tried to stab him in the back, and was promptly attacked by five Morinans. His mace smashed two of them into the ground, then the others drove him into the barricade. He fell over a jutting chair leg, fell back into an upturned table, and the other three men swarmed over him. He knocked another down with his mace, but the last two got up again and he did not.
Blade held the Wolf leaders at bay single-handedly for a good five minutes. Finally the pile of armored bodies widened the gap in the flames until he could no longer hold it by himself. The Wolves poured through, to be met head-on by the mounted guards and by Morinans who had too much to avenge to be worried about such a minor thing as their own lives. The Wolf leaders were good fighters, each worth two or three Morinans, and their armor protected them from much. They were not good enough or well-protected enough to stand against people who only wanted to kill and didn"t care about being killed in the process.
So the fight exploded all along the barricade, with Blade in the middle of it, still swinging his ax. At last the press of bodies around him grew so thick he no longer had room to swing. He drew his dagger and began stabbing Wolves through the eyeslits of their helmets, under their armpits, anywhere their armor offered him a vulnerable point. He stabbed again and again, until his dagger was coated an inch deep in congealed blood and began to lose its point. He lost track of how the battle was going, how many of his own men and how many Wolves were dead, even how many men he"d killed himself.
Suddenly the whistle of arrows and bolts was added to the uproar, followed by screams as they struck into the ranks of the men-at-arms behind the Wolf leaders. Other arrows struck the Wolves" heudas. The maddened animals jerked themselves free of the men-at-arms holding them and bolted in all directions. A man-at-arms tried to stop one and the desperate animal drove one of its sharp horns into his thigh. The man was lifted high, screaming and thrashing, then dropped to the ground where a dozen more heudas trampled him.
Blade looked up and saw the windows and roofs of the houses on either side of the street crammed with archers. Zemun Bossir must have decided that it was worth stripping the walls, if the Wolves" attack from the palace could be smashed quickly. Well, they could argue the point in the morning, if they both lived through the night. The Wolves weren"t going to get through along this street, but that didn"t mean the fight was over. There were four other streets, all of them had to be held, and there could still be an a.s.sault on the walls. The Wolves might even learn how to fight a battle on their own!
Blade was still on his feet when dawn broke over Morina, after one of the longest and bloodiest nights of his life. The Wolves kept coming out of the palace and hurling themselves at the barricades. Blade rode from one danger point to another, rallying the defenders against each successive attack.
"They shall not pa.s.s!" The cry that rallied the French defenders of Verdun in 1916 now rallied the Morinans against the Wolves. The improvised barricades of furniture and cobblestones were held as firmly as if they"d been walls of solid iron.
After a while, the Wolves gave up trying to crack the barricades and tried to outflank them. Then there was more savage fighting, house-to-house and even room-to-room. Blade himself grappled with a Wolf leader and threw him down a flight of stairs. His armor did not save him from a three-story fall. Other Wolves died with their faces smashed in by chunks of firewood, were scalded by boiling water, were pushed into fireplaces filled with hot coals.
When the Wolves could choose their ground, they were as good as ever. Then four or five Morinans would die for every Wolf. But the Wolves were not often that lucky, and even certain death did not stop the Morinans. They quickly sensed they had the advantage, and became more fearless and more bloodthirsty as the night went on.
Twice the Wolves in the camp outside Morina tried an attack on the city walls. The first time the archers were busy inside the city, so the Wolves were able to cross the moat and get a foothold on the walls. Then Zemun Bossir led a counterattack with every man he could sc.r.a.pe together and drove the Wolves back.
After that Blade ordered all the archers back to the wall. "If I see one of you anywhere else tonight, I"ll strangle him with my own hands." The archers obeyed, and when the Wolves came on the second time they were beaten off more easily. The tar barrels gave the archers plenty of light, and even women and children helped push down scaling ladders.
The Wolves continued their attacks until the sky began to turn gray. Then they seemed to accept their defeat and began a slow, stubborn retreat toward the palace. There lay the crystals of the sky-bridge that had brought them in and now would take them out again in safety.
They never crossed the sky-bridge. Duke Efrim"s household guards had been willing to let the Wolves in, hoping to he spared along with their master after the Wizard"s victory. Now they saw defeat hanging over the Wolves and doom hanging over them. The people of Morina would tear them and their master to shreds long before the Wizard could do anything to save them.
So they turned against the Wolves. The retreating men found arrows. .h.i.tting them in the back. Those who reached the palace found the gates locked against them. Most of the Wolves died in a final, desperate hand-to-hand struggle under the walls of the palace, attacked on all sides. Blade managed to have a few spared as prisoners for questioning. Then the duke"s guards opened the palace gates and the people of Morina swarmed in, howling for Duke Efrim"s blood.
They did not get it. Blade and Serana found the duke lying on the floor of the bell chamber, an empty wine cup clutched in one hand. He"d taken a dose of the same poison he"d used on so many of his and the Wizard"s enemies.
Blade saw that the duke"s wife and children were escorted out of the palace and turned over to Haymi Razence. The innkeeper seemed to be keeping his head. His personal guards could be trusted to keep their prisoners out of sight and safe from the mob.
With the duke accounted for, the search for the sky-bridge crystals began. It ended swiftly and spectacularly. The crystals must have been active when they were found, and whoever tried to smash them wasn"t as lucky as Blade. The explosion flattened a whole wing of the palace and buried most of the duke"s personal servants in the rubble. "Good riddance to the whole lot," was Serana"s epitaph for them.
By Serana"s orders, Duke Efrim"s body was placed on one of the new stone-throwers and hurled over the walls, to tell the Wolves that Morina was no longer vulnerable to treachery. His head was cut off and stuck on a spike over the main gate of the palace.
Blade was increasingly glad he would not be staying in Morina after the end of the fighting. Serana was a lovely and gifted woman, but there was a bloodthirsty streak in her that Blade was coming to like less and less. He didn"t blame her for having it, not after all she"d been through, but he didn"t want to find himself in its path either.
Count Drago Bossir had an arrow wound in his thigh, which was almost a relief to Blade. The wound wouldn"t kill the old man, but it would keep him out of the rest of the fighting. Blade found himself increasingly determined that Count Drago should live to see the breaking of the Wizard"s power and the destruction of the Wolves who had done so much to him.
Zemun Bossir, on the other hand, had come through all the fighting unwounded, covering himself with glory and other people"s blood. If Serana was laying any plots against him, she hadn"t been able to do anything. Perhaps that would discourage her.
When all the bodies were counted up, there were more than six hundred dead Wolves, a third of them leaders. That was a loss the Wolves could not afford. There were also more than two thousand dead Morinans, a loss the city couldn"t afford. The battle had been a b.l.o.o.d.y mess; the next battle would be even worse.
Morina would get no reinforcements, but neither would the Wolves. Blade learned that from the Wolf prisoners. The armies of cities friendly to Morina would never break through the Wolves, but they were keeping the armies of cities friendly to the Wizard from coming to join the siege.
Even better news from the prisoners was that the Wizard himself was not with the army. He"d sent two-thirds of his Wolves-four thousand of them-against Morina, but as far as anyone knew he hadn"t left his castle since the rebellion began.
Blade was relieved. Now there was no danger of the Wizard"s mental powers sowing panic and terror in Morina. He could send messages to individual men over great distances, but not terrorize thirty-five thousand people.
Almost as important, his own job would be easier, once the Wolves were defeated. Behind the walls of his castle, the Wizard was safe from the Rentorans, who would gladly cut him into small pieces with dull knives. Whether he would consider returning to Home Dimension with Blade, after Blade had led the Rentorans in smashing his power, was another question. At least the Wizard would be alive for Blade to ask him, and that was something. Blade wasn"t particularly optimistic about getting the Wizard back to Home Dimension alive and sane, but he knew he had to try.
Freeing Rentoro from the Wizard"s grip was a great accomplishment, but it could not do as much for Britain as the Wizard"s secrets.
Chapter 22.
Now all at once it was summer. One blazing hot day followed another. The moat with its load of dead Wolves, the garbage heaps in the back streets of Morina, the latrine pits in the enemy"s camp-all sent up into the windless air a smell that grew worse with each pa.s.sing day.
The smell itself didn"t worry Blade. What did worry him was the possibility of disease that smell implied. Thirty-five thousand people were now crammed inside walls that normally held twenty thousand. The wells and streams provided barely enough water for drinking, none at all for washing. Filth and garbage normally carted off to fertilize nearby fields was piling higher and higher. The Wolves could not break the spirit of Morina"s defenders but a plague might.
Of course a plague could also sweep through the ranks of the Wolves. But the Wolves could ride away if they had to, seeking clean air and water, leaving behind their own filth. The Morinans had nowhere to go.
Blade had other worries beside the growing risk of plague. Count Drago was not recovering from his wound. Instead he grew weaker and weaker each day, the flesh melting from his already lean frame. An infection that Rentoro"s medicine could not handle was eating him away from within.
The count didn"t lack the will to live-in fact, he would have insisted on being carried to the walls each day on a litter if Blade hadn"t forbidden it. It was his strength that faded steadily, and the hot, foul air of Morina didn"t help. Blade had the count established in the best-ventilated room of the late Duke Efrim"s palace, but that was all he could do for the old man.
The count might still live to see the final battle against the Wolves. They were hard at work in their camp, night and day, preparing for the all-out attack on the walls of Morina. Some people in Morina were allowing themselves to hope the Wolves had lost their old spirit and the attack would be feeble. It was true that without the Wizard"s leadership, they were under a great handicap. The failure of the night attack through the palace had killed off too many of the best Wolves and given the rest an unpleasant shock. They were suffering from the heat, from lack of food, and from lack of experience in camping out.
None of these things kept the Wolves from working like galley slaves. They built rams, they built ma.s.sive stonethrowers, they built two tall siege towers. They piled up tons of brush to fill the moat and long planks to cross it. By night they dug trenches close to the moat, so their archers could fire from cover at the men on the walls.
The attack would come and there would be nothing feeble about it when it came. The Wolves might have the supplies and equipment for only one attack, but they would put everything they had into that one. Morina might destroy the Wolves, but it might be destroyed itself in the process, burying its enemies under its own ruins and under the piled bodies of its own people.
Blade would have won some other way if he could, but now there might be no other way.
Even Serana seemed to be caught up in the tension. For days on end she never mentioned Zemun Bossir. She cut her hair short, so that it would fit under a helmet and practiced with a sword several hours each day. She lost weight and the dark circles grew under her eyes until she looked the same as when she"d been the Wizard"s prisoner.
Blade awoke in the darkness, knowing that something was wrong without being sure quite how he knew. He slipped out of bed without waking the sleeping Serana and went to the window.
It gave him a view toward the Wolves" siege camp. It lay almost invisible in the night, silent and unnaturally dark, the usual scattering of campfires gone.
The campfires were out! The Wolves had darkened their camp, and they could only be doing that to conceal something. Blade ran back to the bed and shook Serana awake. She sat up, naked and still half asleep, rubbing her eyes.
"Get up and get dressed," he said briskly. "The Wolves have darkened their camp. They may not be attacking tonight, but something"s up!"
Serana hurried to the window to look for herself. As she did, Blade heard the tramping of feet in the street below. He wasn"t the only man in Morina who thought the Wolves might be up to something.
They were pulling on their armor when Blade heard several new sounds, in a ragged chorus. There was a creaking, a groaning, and a squealing, all of it faint and wavering, as though it came from far away-beyond the walls of Morina. As Blade was buckling on his boots, fists pounded on the door, Serana drew the bolt, and one of Zemun"s officers practically fell into the room.
"Lord Zemun wishes you to come to the east wall, my lord and lady," he gasped. "The Wolves are moving up their siege machines. He also says the watchers on the bell tower have seen the fires of another camp, far to the north."
More Wolves, thought Blade. The Wizard must have stripped even his castle to reinforce the attack on Morina. He wasn"t going to get the victory he was hoping for, even then. Morina would eat all the Wolves he could send against it, but this would do the Morinans no good. They would buy freedom for Rentoro with their own lives and their own city. It was hard for Blade to remember that the fall of Morina would also mean his own death. Perhaps, when all was said and done, it was not so important that he"d reached the end of his road.
Blade and Serana followed the young officer down the stairs. As they reached the street a sudden wsssh of disturbed air sounded overhead, growing rapidly louder. It ended abruptly in a tearing crash, as something large plunged out of the sky and through the roof of a nearby house. The crackle of breaking timbers and the crash and rattle of falling masonry went on for quite a while. Before it stopped, another stone struck farther off, nearer to the walls, and then a third.
Serana started to run, but Blade held her back. "They"ve started the stone-throwers, but I think they"re just trying to soften us up. Smash houses, kill people, block the streets, start a panic." He called to the officer. "Message for Lord Zemun. Turn out all the soldiers and have them get everybody out of the houses near the east wall. Also, have our own stone-throwers hold their fire and pull back out of range.
"It"s going to be grim," he said to Serana. "But I don"t think there"s any danger until they start on the walls, trying to open breaches for their storming parties. If we don"t panic, they can"t do us much harm by knocking down houses."