the range of an arrow shot straight up is far less than one shot along the ground. He had no fear of breast-bows, even of the heavy crossbow quarrels of his own side. When the first yard-long shaft zipped past his side and tore through a side-vane he did not understand what it was. Then, almost directly underneath him, he saw the bow bent again and his danger with it.
“He's signaling to be hauled in,” Shef said, watching through the far-seer. The man at the mooring-line began to haul in, coiling the rope round his elbow for want of the winch.
“Something's wrong.” The second arrow had driven through the body of the kite, all the archers could see to aim at. It had caught Tolman through the knee. His first start and twist of agony had almost turned the kite away from the wind. Then he had recovered himself, was trying to spill the wind enough to help the hauler, but keep it under the top of the box-shaped kite to keep him aloft. As they hauled him in, the elevation fell, the range for the heavy yew bow shortened. It was slower to reload than a goat's foot crossbow, as the two men operating it heaved the cord back by main strength and fitted it over the releasing ratchet. They still had time enough for the third shot.
Tolman was barely ten feet from the wall and safety when the men reaching out to seize him heard the whistle of the arrow, saw the small face contort and the small body jerk to the blow. They still could not see what had hit him. As they hauled him over the battlement, hands reached to pull him from his sling. He could not move, seemed wedged. Then Shef, reaching inside to cut the obstruction free, saw the great arrow driven through sling and body and out the other side. With four ripping slashes he cut away the material and the cords, pulled the boy and the harness and the arrow together all free. It was impossible to lay him down, the arrow would have been driven further through. He stood clutching the boy as blood ran down over his tunic.
“Where is Hund?” he called.
The little leech was already there. He took the boy from Shef's arms, laid him down carefully on his side, cut quickly at the sling and the clothes inside.
He sat back on his heels, patted the boy's face reassuringly. Shef had seen him do that before. It was a death sentence.
“No need to talk,” he murmured soothingly. But the boy's face showed worry now, more than pain. He was trying to say something, face turned towards Shef. The king bent forward, trying to pick out the dying words. Something to do with the Emperor…
“What? What was that?” he said.
The boy's head turned sideways and Hund let it fall, rolling down the eyelids with professional hand. He looked up at his lord and one-time friend with the disgust and hatred that had come upon him again and again on this voyage. Shef paid no attention.
“He saw something. He tried to tell me something. Something vital. Have we another kite? Someone else to go aloft?”
“They dragged your kite along, the big one,” said one voice.
“You could look for yourself,” said another.
“Unless you want to thend another bairn,” said a third. It was Cwicca, still lisping through his broken front teeth. Shef remembered suddenly that he had struck him in the night, threatened to send him back to slavery. But he could not remember why. All the faces turned towards him betrayed anger, even contempt. He had never seen that before, not from his own men, whom he had freed from their masters. No, he had seen such a look once. In the face of Godive. It was what had sent him on this expedition.
“Rig my kite then and put me in it,” he said, his voice sounding in his own ears as if it came from far away.
Moments later, it seemed, he was in his harness, held up by a dozen men, lines attached. His face was a bare foot from Cwicca's just below.
“I'm sorry,” he said.
They launched him into the rising wind.
As had happened with Tolman, he dropped instantly below the wall. For seconds he could see nothing but the great squared stones flashing past in front of him, while he thought of the man who had jumped from the tower of the Wisdom House, jumped and gone straight down. Then there was the feeling of lift again, and he felt the wind take him. They were reeling him out as fast as they could, he was beginning to climb, already he could see over the wall. He could see Brand shouting and lashing out at the men who had launched him, could see crossbows lining the wall and starting to shoot down, to kill or distract the men who had shot Tolman. Time to look round and see what it was that Tolman had died for. There, yes, the troops of the enemy forming up for the attack. Not where Tolman had said the first time, but massing behind a villa from which two flights of steps led up to the city-wall where his remaining command was strung out. He leant forward as far as he could without tipping the whole flimsy contrivance into a downward swoop, shouted at the top of his voice, far stronger than Tolman's pipe.
“There! There!” He struggled a hand free and pointed. Brand at least had caught his meaning, was off in the right direction. Steffi was on the wall too, doing something with his gear and an armful of earthenware pots.
“Burn the bastards alive,” said Steffi gleefully as he poured his deadly mixture into the pots he had taken from the nearest guardhouse kitchen.
“Let 'em get halfway up before you shoot,” bellowed Brand, arranging his defenses. “Don't shoot to kill, shoot 'em in the belly. Frightens the rest of 'em.”
Hund stood up from his crouch beside the dead boy, thought of his patients lost in the night, thought of the burned and scalded men he had treated all through, thought of the death and chaos and the worship of Loki. He twitched the heavy sax-knife from Cwicca's belt, stepped over and hacked through the mooring-line. The kite on the end of it jerked, began to rise and drift away. One of the men on the handling-lines tried to jerk it in, over- compensated, instantly let go before he pulled the kite into a dive. Hund slashed out at the other lines, men ducked, tried to avoid him. In moments only one line held, at one corner, it was tugging the kite over with no pressure from other lines to resist it. The man let go.
Trailing rope, the kite stood on its tail, banked clumsily, turned away from them, drifted off across the open country, losing height all the way as its unskilled operator tried to bring it under control.
With a blare of trumpets the Emperor's stormers surged forward towards the stairways, the stairways held now by axe and sword alone.
Chapter Thirty-three
As the lines jerked and parted to the struggle below, Shef felt the kite lurch unpredictably this way and that, felt the instinctive bowel-loosening fear of falling, of empty space beneath him. Then the last line went, and the air was under his canvas again, holding him up like the warm sea under a swimmer. At the same time Shef realized that he was being blown backwards and upwards, the walls of Rome receding, already too far for him to see more than white dots of faces following him from the wall.
To fly free, he remembered, you had to turn away from the wind, not into it. Tolman could do it—Tolman had been able to do it. His nerve quailed at the idea of trying it. Better just to sag backwards, let the wind take him, perhaps bring him down far from the war and the everlasting pain.
It wouldn't happen like that. The wind would change, dash him on stone or drop him into some ravine, to die with a broken back of thirst. He had to turn now. Tolman had said it was like a ship turning fast under oars. Raise one side-vane, lower the other, roll your body as the kite rolled and go round in a bank, just far enough to straighten up. Before his fear had a chance to stop him, Shef worked the controls, trying to do both smoothly and at once. The kite rolled immediately, his body automatically trying to tip the other way, to correct the sickening heave. Override it. Do what Tolman said. Shef tried to point with his back and belly-muscles in the way he wanted to go. He was diving now, still tipped over to one side. Correct it, work the side-vanes, swing the tail with his ankles. For a few moments he was swooping down like a hawk over the villa-dotted slope, his shadow running ahead of him away from the city and the rising sun. Flight! He was the flying man, the Volund escaped from his enemies, the smith who hung in the air while those who had tormented him lamented below. In a moment of ecstasy Shef shouted out the lines from the
