The kender queen, dressed today in a sky blue tunic and matching trousers, consented and immediately invited Voyarunta to join her in a dice game called Three Times Dead.
Tol divided the two thousand men of the Juramona Militia into four companies of five hundred. Each company would follow a different route through the grid of streets, marching parallel to each other and reuniting before the main gate of the Caergoth citadel. Zala gave them quick directions that would allow them to avoid the public plazas, where troops loyal to Wornoth might have congregated.
Tol’s orders were simple. If challenged, the militiamen should fight. But if the opportunity arose, they were to offer opponents the chance to join them, and keep heading toward the palace.
The four companies set off at a trot. Tol, Miya, and Zala went with the center-right column. Tylocost accompanied the far left.
As they progressed, the streets grew increasingly narrow. Miya complained and Tol explained the constriction was intentional, to prevent large bodies of troops from attacking the governor’s palace.
At one intersection they flushed out a band of archers. The militia company charged, but the surprised bowmen, armed only with mauls for close-range fighting, turned and fled.
After passing down another tight street, the Juramonans found themselves before the citadel’s ceremonial gate. This portal, dedicated to Draco Paladin, was open, and some fifty soldiers wearing the governor’s colors milled about it in confusion. As the Juramona spearmen emerged from the alley, the soldiers sent up a shout. The ponderous double doors of the gate began to close.
“Secure that gate!” Tol bawled, and his contingent rushed pell-mell for the portal.
Tol was confronted by a subaltern wearing a fancy gilded helmet. The fellow was half Tol’s age, but wielded his slim blade with skill. Twice he scored, cutting a bloody line on Tol’s right arm and left thigh. Tol tried to cut him with his stronger blade, but his strikes met only air. The young officer was never still for very long. He darted from side to side, avoiding every swing aimed at him.
Sweat stung Tol’s eyes. His breath moved up and down his throat harshly. He’d never been adept at fancy dueling, and as the contest dragged on, his years began telling on him.
Finally, his enemy’s bright iron blade whisked over Tol’s shoulder, snagging briefly on his earlobe. As blood spurted from the cut, Tol managed to seize the man’s wrist.
“Yield!” he said. “Don’t fight us, join us!”
The subaltern punched Tol in the chest with his buckler. Tol staggered backward. The tip of the young soldier’s blade flashed toward his eyes. Reflexively, Tol threw his head back. A cut opened on the bridge of his nose.
Angry now, Tol gripped his saber in both hands. He made a whirling parry, binding up the officer’s slender, straight blade. The fellow hit him again and again with the iron boss of his small shield, but Tol ignored these blows, concentrating on the motion of the blades. At the top of an arc, he flung his hands up, yanking the young officer’s sword high. Disengaging, Tol drove Number Six at his opponent’s heart.
The subaltern brought up his buckler. An iron saber would have been turned aside, but Tol’s steel point punched through the shield’s brass rim and kept going, running the officer through. Mortally wounded, the fellow stumbled backward, dropping his sword. He gaped at Number Six, its hilt nearly touching his chest. There was no pain or fear on his young face, only bewilderment. He simply couldn’t understand how the saber had penetrated both his buckler and his damascened breastplate.
His eyes grew distant, and his lifeless body fell sideways, as Tol recovered Number Six.
“Husband, the gates!”
Miya’s warning drew Tol’s swift attention. The great portal was slowly swinging shut.
Her warning had been heeded by another as well. Out of the melee dashed a slight figure, sword in hand and a floppy hat on his head. Tylocost, running ahead of his men, sprinted for the closing doors. With the fleetness and agility of his race, he wove through the battle, avoiding swords and spearpoints with astonishing dexterity. Reaching the gate, he twisted sideways through the rapidly diminishing gap.
Tol was thunderstruck. He respected the Silvanesti’s skills as a general and knew him to be brave in the casual way of most well-born warriors. But to fling himself, alone, into the midst of a host of enemies was unbelievably courageous-and reckless.
Yanking himself out of his daze, Tol shouted, “To the gate! To the gate! Never mind the guards!”
The Juramonans tried to comply, but only Zala was nimble enough to evade combat and rush to Tylocost’s aid. Tol saw an unusual expression on the half-elf s face as she dodged and wove through the fracas.
Zala was worried about Tylocost.
The gates had stopped. When Zala arrived, the space between them was less than the width of her shoulders, but she pushed through.
For a few terrifying moments, she was blind as she left bright sunlight and entered the gatehouse’s gloomy interior. When her eyes adjusted, she beheld four guards dead or dying by the windlass that operated the gate. Tylocost was battling three more, all equipped with polearms that badly outranged his saber. The thunder of footsteps on the wooden stairs behind them told Zala reinforcements were on their way down.
One of the three soldiers aimed a thrust at Tylocost’s blind side. Lightning-fast, Zala drew a long knife from her boot and flew at the man. She turned aside the overhand chop from his halberd, saving Tylocost, The elf glanced at her, pale eyes widening, then resumed dueling with the remaining two guards.
Zala was panting from exertion. This was not her usual style of fighting. She could use a bow, or slay a charging boar with her sword at short range, but protracted battle, first outside the gate and now in the tight confines of the gatehouse, was foreign to her. Her opponent was an older man, his black hair flecked with gray, and he knew his business. He pushed her back with short jabs of the halberd’s spearhead, then followed with broad sweeps of its blade. She couldn’t reach him with her shorter blade.
Just then, Tol, Miya, and two hundred Juramonans burst through the gate, knocking the double doors wide. A tragic scene met their horrified gazes: Zala lay on her back, clutching a belly wound from which blood welled. Tylocost stood over her fending off two determined halberdiers. A third lay dead at his feet.
Miya screamed. As she intended, the sound distracted one of the halberdiers. He glanced her way, and instantly died at Tylocost’s hand. The other went down beneath a swarm of Juramonans. Reinforcements coming down the stairs from the gatehouse above likewise met Juramonan iron, and after a brief combat, cried for quarter.
“Spare any who lay down their arms!” Tol shouted. “Search the citadel! Find the governor!”
More of the militia poured in to carry out Tol’s orders, and Tylocost’s saber clattered to the stones as he dropped beside Zala. He took her hand in both of his.
“Stupid girl,” he said. “I didn’t need your help!”
“They’d’ve chopped you to bits,” she gasped. Her face was translucent as wax.
Miya’s arms were crimson to the elbows from her efforts to stanch the flow of blood. She looked up at Tol and shook her head. Pain creased Tol’s forehead, and he, too, knelt by the fallen huntress.
Tylocost saw none of this; his attention was focused on Zala, on the blood that continued to well from her terrible wound.
“You shouldn’t be here. You’re not a warrior!” he said, voice harsh with emotion.
“I’ll soon be out of your way.”
He squeezed her hand, and her fingers twitched weakly in response. Helplessly, he whispered her name, heedless of the tears that were falling. Her dark eyes stayed on his face. She blinked once, then her hand went limp in his. Tylocost gently closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Husband,” Miya said quietly.
Tol touched her shoulder, but there was no time for more. Armed men were streaming past them.
“We must go. We must find Governor Wornoth,” Tol said. “Tylocost?”
“I will be here.”
Tol and Miya left the grieving general where he was. As they ascended the steps into the palace proper, Tylocost removed his absurd gardener’s hat and placed it gently over Zala’s face. He began to speak softly, in the melodic language of his people, offering an ancient prayer to Astarin.
