Sounds of fighting came from all around us, smoke heavy in the air from fires burning wherever the defenders could keep them lit. Cries went up and soldiers scrambled toward us from the street, their swords drawn.
“Down!” Bolt ordered. The whine of arrows screamed past me as I dove for the mud.
“Halt! Halt!” an unfamiliar voice screamed. Slowly, we rose, surrounded by bedraggled and bloody soldiers with arrows trained on our hearts.
Erendella stepped forward, her hands above her head. “I am Erendella, queen of Caisel. King Rymark is expecting me.”
No one moved. Treflow’s defenders were too scared and we were too tired.
“They’re not putting their weapons down,” Rory said.
Bolt sat on the bank of the river, favoring his injured leg. “They can hold them on us every step of the way to Rymark, for all I care—just so long as we get there.”
Chapter 65
They kept us on the bank of the river for an hour, until Rymark came to us, barking orders as runners brought reports from each section of the city. Memories of the last war threatened to break loose from the room in my mind where I’d locked them away. The screams of death and dying were too close, too loud. More than anything, I wanted to close my eyes and put my hands over my ears.
“You’re early,” he said to Erendella.
She nodded. “Errant Consto thought it best to sneak into the city before resistance could be organized against us.”
Rymark nodded. “You’re referring to the traitor in our midst. He’s been dealt with.” He nodded toward the river. “That was quite a risk.”
Erendella didn’t bother with accusations or criticism. “Under the circumstances, it was the best we could do.”
The ride to Treflow and our entrance to the city had left me weak. I could have used the riverbank for a bed, but I pushed myself up to stand before half the kings and queens of the north. “We have to call the Fayit.”
Rymark nodded, but doubt clouded his expression. A runner, his right arm hanging useless, ran up, not stopping until he came within reach of the king’s circle of guards. “We’re losing the west wall,” he said.
Rymark barked an order that sent four dozen soldiers running into the night before turning back to us. “Whatever you wish to do, Lord Dura, will have to wait until morning. We’re holding for now.”
“But we can call them now,” I said.
The king’s face clouded. “Lord Dura, when dawn comes, I will be more than happy to entertain your fancy, but if I leave, more of my men will die, and I don’t like it when my men die. We’ll hold through the night.” Without waiting for a reply he barked an order and another injured soldier, this one on makeshift crutches, came forward to lead us away.
The slow pace through the city afforded me the opportunity to see the extremity of Rymark’s defense. Rings of palisades and barriers had been set every hundred paces, lines of retreat made with whatever materials could be scavenged. More than one building had been razed to build barricades and clear lines of fire for archers.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Willet,” Bolt said. “Rymark’s gambling everything on buying you enough time to call Ealdor’s friends.”
On our way to the center of the city, we passed a watchfire that threw the lines of his face into stark relief. “How do you know that?”
He pointed south, but I couldn’t match his vision. “He’s left no avenue of escape, which means either he thinks he can win, or that you can.”
“Where are we going?” Gael asked our escort.
“The counting house,” he said. “It’s the closest thing this city has to a citadel.”
“Any tunnels?” Bolt asked.
He kicked a piece of rubble out of the way as he placed his crutches for another step. “No, and there’s only one entrance.”
Bolt shook his head. “That’s not a defense—it’s a death trap.”
Everything about the counting house fit our escort’s description, but he’d neglected to mention that Prince Maenelic’s head would be on a post out front. The prince somehow looked surprised, but his eyes were closed and I had no desire to speak with him.
I caught Bolt’s attention. “That’s another sin we can place at Gehata’s feet.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“A little compassion might have kept Maenelic from this,” I said. “For that matter, trusting me with one of the scrying stones might have as well.”
“Water through the gate, Willet,” Bolt said.
The doors to the moneylenders’ guild were high, but they lacked the arch at the top favored in the keeps and holds of the nobility. Heavy bands of iron gave their rectangular shape the look and feel of forbidding solidity. Rymark’s escort crutched his way past a heavy contingent of guards and rapped three times on the door, paused and struck twice more.
“The code changes every day, in case the defenses fail,” he said. “But I wouldn’t want to fight my way free even in the daytime.”
We entered into a grand hall, and the doors boomed shut behind us. Barrels of food and water lined the walls, and medical supplies filled the tables. “They’ll be near the holding room,” our guide said.
We turned a corner, and I saw Toria and Fess standing near Cailin, queen regent of Collum. At her side the prince chewed on a chubby fist, his eyes wide, taking everything in. Brid Teorian stood on her other side. A tall woman I didn’t recognize—with dark eyebrows and hair so blond it was almost white—observed us from a few paces away.
There was no sign of Pellin.
“Welcome to Treflow, Lord Dura,” Toria Deel said.
The blond woman turned to regard me with a lift of her dark brows. “That’s him?
