‘What do we do?’ asked Grafyrre.
Katyett turned to her Tai, both with eyes wide with shock. ‘Walk only where they walk. Run on the edges. And make the humans pay for what they did to Makran. Marack, your orders stand. Tai, with me.’
Katyett was up and sprinting the next instant. She headed for the bamboo shroud running perpendicular to the end of the bridge, her eyes on the flames, her prayers to Yniss keen with every step she took. Katyett leapt, feet first and horizontal.
She caught a corner of the carved pile and pivoted around it and over the rail, her boots slamming into the back of the nearest guard, propelling him off the bridge to tumble down the slope. He rolled straight into the flames to be consumed like the TaiGethen he had refused to help.
Behind Katyett, Merrat hurdled the rail. She ran the width of the bridge and delivered a left hook to the second guard’s jaw. The man’s head snapped back. He fell back against the rail and toppled down into the river.
Grafyrre landed on the rail, turned and began to run down its length. Merrat mirrored him. Katyett took the centre. The three remaining guards moved to block the exit, the mage behind them already gesturing in the air. Katyett took a jaqrui from her belt pouch and threw it on the run. The sickle-shaped blade mourned away. It sliced into the sword arm of the centremost guard. He cried out and dropped his weapon, clutching at the blood flowing from the deep clean cut.
At a command from the mage, the guards dropped to a crouch. The air chilled. The mage pushed out his hands. Katyett yelled a warning and fell prone, her momentum setting her rolling, her arms tucked into her chest, fists either side of her neck. Merrat and Grafyrre leapt high as they ran, turning rolls into the sky before flattening their bodies horizontal, arms stretched out to the sides.
The casting howled over Katyett’s body. She gasped freezing air. Behind her, wood became thick with ice. She heard the cracking of timbers as moisture froze and expanded within them. She rolled on another turn before slapping her left palm down to push herself up. She came up, still turning, found her feet and strode on. Merrat and Grafyrre landed either side.
Ahead, the guards swallowed, not believing what they had just seen. It was not something they would tell friends or lovers. Katyett pulled out a short blade and swung it two-handed, chopping into the neck of the injured man, feeling the edge grind against bone.
She leapt over his falling body, leaving the sword where it had stuck and closing on the mage. He was trying to form another casting but the fear in him was too great. He held out his hands in supplication. Katyett knocked them aside with her left arm and crashed her right fist into the point of his jaw. He crumpled down and back.
Katyett turned. Merrat and Grafyrre were walking past their victims. Blood dripped from blades. Merrat paused to work Katyett’s sword from the neck of her kill. He wiped it on the grass and handed it to her. Katyett glanced back down the bridge. Marack was kneeling by the bodies of Makran and her Tai, praying.
‘We need to move. This won’t have gone unnoticed,’ said Katyett. She nodded at the mage. ‘Bring him. He has a lot to answer. Let’s go.’
The main road into the city from the bridge drove straight through cleared and cultivated land and passed the river fishing fleet, their jetties, marina and a ramshackle assortment of huts and shelters. They wound their way deep into the maze of buildings and businesses that served the fleet. Boatbuilding and repair yards, sail and oar makers, crab catchers, eateries, inns and the local marketplace.
The humans hadn’t been here. It was deserted anyway. Few elves lived here for long and those that did had long run into the forest to seek sanctuary. The maze led on to the Kirith Marsh. Treacherous to any who blundered into it unknowing, but perfect access to the beaches and harbourside if you knew where to tread.
Katyett, her Tai and the groggy mage moved on, their trail already cooling like the blood of their kills.
Chapter 31
If I stand by you in battle, I will die before I let you die. That is my pledge. If we all pledge this, we cannot be defeated. They saw the western sky light up. The windows of the panorama room on the upper floor of the left arm of Shorth’s temple looked directly towards the Ultan. They had been granted the freedom of the upper floor, but this chamber, light and warm, decorated for joy and furnished in luxury, was where they spent almost all of their time.
They were not, Garan said, prisoners. They had the run of the temple, just not the wider city, which remained under total curfew. Indeed he had insisted that the business of the temple carry on as normal, or as close to normal as anything could in the city. It was a partnership for control of Calaius, he said. Balaia’s college of magic at Triverne wanted to forge a long-term alliance with the elves of Calaius for mutual benefit. But in the short term that meant control of the country had to pass to the military and magical power of Balaia.
He said.
‘TaiGethen,’ said Sildaan, feeling a sadness she had not expected. ‘I hope they survived that.’
‘Why?’ said Llyron. ‘We’re as good as dead anyway.’
‘I’d rather die on the blade of an elf than of a human,’ said Sildaan. ‘At least then we’d know our land was free of man.’
‘Such sentiments sound hollow coming from your mouth,’ said Llyron. ‘And Shorth will be unimpressed.’
‘Why are you talking this way?’
Both turned from the window to see Helias wringing his hands as he paced up and down. A performance of cringing anxiety that would not have looked out of place in the Hausolis Playhouse.
‘Because, Helias, we have been betrayed by men and I suppose we should have guarded against it,’ said Hithuur from a seat as far from the Tuali former Speaker as it was possible to get.
‘How could we have done that?’ asked Llyron, her face angry at the implied slur.
Sildaan was interested in the answer too, although she was in silent agreement with her fellow priest. Besides the fifteen Senserii, who were elsewhere in the temple and perhaps no longer alive, no professional elven fighters had been approached by the conspirators, let alone recruited.
‘You trusted the fact that money would buy loyalty.’
‘As it has in the past, yes. What is your point?’
‘This place is too rich for human mercenaries to leave with nothing but a few coins to show for the job,’ said Hithuur. ‘I hate to say it but we should have bought the loyalty of Helias’s Tuali reserve militia. A hundred or so angry farmers and sailors would have been handy right now.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Helias. ‘None of you are getting it. It just doesn’t matter.’
Llyron favoured Helias with a withering glare. ‘Because?’
‘Because we are where we are, and because we are still in the best negotiating position of any group on Calaius.’
‘And I thought by your rather painful display of fear that you, like us, felt us to be prisoners on death row for knowing too much,’ said Llyron.
Sildaan, though, was thinking. ‘This is a tough country, my priest. I think we should hear the Tuali out.’
Llyron waved a hand and went to recline on a long cushion-covered couch.
‘You understand, Sildaan, I knew you would. I’m pacing up and down looking for an angle while you’re all talking of certain death and facing the unbound fury of Shorth. And I think I have one.’ Helias paused and massaged the sides of his nose with his index fingers. ‘Calaius is an impossible country to rule unless by consent. It is too big, too complex and too dangerous outside the cities. I don’t believe for one moment that the humans want to rule us for any longer than is absolutely necessary.’
‘They’ve sent another two thousand men. The mercenaries we hired were clearly given to us by this city-of- magic place,’ said Sildaan. ‘It is an invasion.’
‘It is a statement of intent and power,’ countered Helias. ‘With magic and muscle, we now know they can take our cities as and when they choose. And they can also back any future government with this power. Look at it logically. If you’re a Balaian, do you want to live here fighting every day to stay alive, or do you want to enjoy the massive wealth of Calaius using a puppet government?’
Sildaan exchanged glances with Llyron, whose mask of disgust had slipped to one of contempt.
‘You want to tithe this whole country to men?’ she said.
