the shouting and the smell of smoke. I ran along the canal to the Embankments, crossed there, and back down the east bank to where I could cut across to the exercise grounds and the hippodrome. They were empty, deserted, but I saw the line of Ald soldiers on guard, up on the long, low swell of Council Hill behind the stables. All I could do was climb the hill towards them, my heart beating harder and harder.
The soldiers stood and said nothing. They watched me. A couple of crossbows were aimed at me.
I got to within ten feet of them, stopped, and tried to catch my breath.
They looked more foreign to me, those men, than they had ever looked in all the years I’d seen Ald soldiers, my whole life. Their faces were sallow, their short, pale sheep hair curled out under their helmets, their eyes were pale. They stared at me without expression, without a word.
“Is there a boy named Simme in the Gand’s stablest I said. My voice came out very thin.
None of the six or seven men nearest me in the line moved or spoke for so long I thought they were not going to answer at all. Then the one right in front of me, who had no crossbow, but a sword in his belt and his hand on the hilt, said, “What if there is, youngster?”
“Simme knows me,” I said. He looked his question: So?
“I have a message from my master the Waylord to the Gand Ioratth. I can’t get through the crowds. I can’t get through the lines. It’s urgent. Simme can vouch for me. Tell him it’s Mem.”
The soldiers looked at one another. They conferred a little. “Let the kid through,” one said, but the others said no, and finally the swordsman nearest me said, “I’ll take him in.”
So I followed him on round the long back of the stables. Not every moment of this time is clear in my memory. I was so set on my goal that how I reached it seemed unimportant, details swallowed in the overriding urgency. I do remember some things clearly. I remember Simme coming into the small room where the swordsman had brought me to his officer. Simme saluted the officer and stood stiffly. “Do you know this boy?” the officer asked. Simme’s eyes shifted to me. His head did not turn. His face changed entirely. It went soft, like Sosta’s face when she looked at Orrec. His lips quivered. He said, “Yes sir.”
“Well?”
“He’s Mem. He’s a groom.”
“Whose groom?”
“He belongs to the maker and the lion woman. He came here with them. He lives at the Demon House.”
“Very good,” the officer said.
Simme stood still. His gaze came back to me, beseeching. He looked white and not so pimply. He looked tired, the way so many people of Ansul had looked, all my life. He looked hungry.
“You have a message from Caspro the maker for the Gand Ioratth,” the officer said to me.
I nodded. The name of Caspro the maker might be a safer password than that of Galva the Waylord.
“Say it to me.”
“I can’t. It’s for the Gand. Or for Tirio Actamo,”
“Obarth!” the officer said. After a moment I realised he was swearing. He looked me over again. “You’re an Ald,” he said.
I said nothing.
“What are they saying out there about an Ald force coming over the pass?”
“They say there is one.”
“How large a forcer”
I shrugged.
“Obatth!” he said again. He was a short, worn-faced man, not young, and he too looked hungry. “Listen. I can’t get through to the barracks. The city people are holding the line between us. If you can get through, go ahead. Take a message for me too. Tell the Gand we’vegot ninety men here and all the horses. Plenty of fodder but short of food. Both of you go.? You heard the message, cadet?”
“Yes sir,” Simme said. I could see his chest fill with a deep breath. He saluted again, wheeled round, and strode out. I followed him, and the officer followed me.
The officer got us through the cordon, and then I got us through the line of citizens that faced them. I looked for a face I knew. Marid wasn’t there, but her sister Remi was, and I talked her easily enough into letting us pass. “A message from the Waylord to the Lady Tirio” was what did it.
Once out in the crowd of citizens in the open square, we were on our own. Fortunately Simme had no uniform except the blue knot on his shoulder. Once somebody said, “Are those kids Alds?”?seeing our hair?but we wriggled away into the crowd. We pushed and shoved and got cursed at clear round the east end of the stables, across the steps below the Council Square, and then we had to face the line of citizens again, near the barracks. Again I found a face I knew, Chamer, one of Gudit’s old friends, but how I talked us through I don’t remember. Chamer spoke with the Ald guard facing him, quite a discussion, I do remember that. Then we were through both lines, and a guard was taking us across the parade ground to the barracks, shouting as he went for Simme’s father.
I saw his father come running. Simme stopped and stood still and tried to salute him, but his father took him in his arms.
“Victory is well, Father,” Simme said. He was crying. “I exercised her as much as I could.”
“Good,” his father said, still holding him. “Well done.” Other men and officers came pouring out of the barracks, and we gathered quite an escort walking past the long buildings and outbuildings. Whenever an officer stopped me, Simme and his father were there to affirm that I came from the Demon House, where the maker Orrec Caspro was, with a message from him. Then we went into the last building of the row, and the soldiers and officers dropped back. I saw Simme watching me as I was sent forward alone. I went past a door guard into a long room with long windows overlooking the curve of the East Canal. Tirio Actamo came forward to meet me.
She did not know me at first, and I had to say my name. She took my hands, and then embraced me; and I wasn’t far from crying myself, from sheer relief. But there was my message to be given.
“The Waylord sent me. He needs to know what the Gand knows about the army coming from Asudar.”
“Best you talk to Ioratth yourself, Memer,” Tirio said. Her face was still swollen and discolored and her head bandaged, but the bandage became her, like a little hat; nothing could make her ugly. And she had a sweet, easy way about her, she comforted ones heart just by speaking. So I was less scared than I might have been when she took me across the room to the bed on which the Gand Ioratth lay.
He was propped up on a lot of embroidered pillows. A red cloth had been hung from the ceiling over the head of the bed, so that coming close was like entering a tent. The Gand’s legs and feet were out from under the covers, covered with raw burns and blackscabbed ones, painful-looking. He glared at me like a leashed hawk.
“Who’s this? Are you Ald or Ansul, boy?”
“I am Memer Galva,” I said. “I come to you from the Waylord, Sulter Galva.”
“Hah!” said the Gand. The glare became a gimlet. “I’ve seen you.”
“I came with Orrec Caspro when he recited to you.”
“You’re an Ald.”
“If I’d borne you a child, you might well take it for an Ald,” said Tirio, mild and ladylike.
He grimaced, absorbing this.
“What’s your message then, if the maker sent you?”
“The Waylord sent me,” I said.
“If Ansul has a leader, Ioratth, it is Galva the Waylord,” Tirio said. “Orrec Caspro is a guest of his house. It might be for the best if you and he were in communication,”
He grunted. “Why did he send your” he demanded of me.
“To ask if you know why soldiers are coming from Asudar, and how many, and if you’ll change your orders to your troops when they come.”
“Is that all,” said the Gand. He looked at Tirio. “By God, this is a cool young sprout! One of your family, no doubt.”
“No, my lord. Memer is a daughter of the House of Galvamand.”
“Daughter!” the Gand said. The gimlet became a glare, and finally a blink. “So she is,” he said, almost resignedly. He moved in discomfort, and winced, and rubbed his head with its frizz of half-burnt hair. “And you think I should send her back to Galva with a list of my strategies and intentions, do you?”
“Memer,” Tirio asked, “is the city going to attack the barracks?”
