He barked once, his tongue lolling out to one side, and turned to follow our last hope to the gates of the city. “I’ve become one of you at last,” I said softly.
I hadn’t counted on Bolt’s sense of hearing. “How so, Dura?”
He stood in the dying rays of the sun like a living statue, as absolute and unyielding in his sense of purpose as granite. “The lives of my friends are nothing more than ficheall pieces on the board,” I said.
“If you enjoyed it, you’d be the wrong man for the job,” Bolt said. “We should get back to the counting house.”
“No. I need to see what’s happening.”
“Why?” Bolt asked. “You can’t do anything about it until Pellin gets here.”
When I didn’t answer, Bolt let out his breath in a long sigh. “Very well, but we’re going to do this on my terms.”
I blinked. “What would those be?”
“We’re going to stay as close to Rymark as his shadow,” he said. “If you want to know what’s happening, that’s the place to be, and if the king of Owmead falls, we’ve lost anyway.”
We found him talking with Toria Deel near the north wall of the city. Rymark held a pink scrying stone he used to communicate last details to Ellias. Toria held her own scrying stone, this one with a green cast. I could hear a voice coming from the stone, but I was too far away to make out the words.
Rymark nodded to me. “Lady Deel’s idea,” he said. “Her apprentice is far more useful to us as a scout. If he can stay hidden and tell us where Cesla’s men will be, we can shift men to the point of attack.”
The sun sank below the horizon, an inexorable death that cooled the air with its dying. I tried to ignore the symbolism. From the north and the south I heard a moan that built into a wail as thousands of voices cried in their damnation. We followed Rymark as he ascended ladders to the tallest roof on the northern wall. I looked out over the low parapet to darkness. No one had lit the watchfires.
I waited for my eyes to adjust, and after a moment I could see smudges of color shifting on the outer wall.
“Any injured soldier who can still draw a bow has been placed there,” Rymark said. “We’ll see how well Toria Deel’s hunters do.”
A door in my mind from the last war tried to open, and I forced it shut, strained with the effort to keep it closed. One of the memories escaped, and I relived the terror of being hopelessly outnumbered. Like Fess, Lelwin, and the rest. “Can they last until dawn?”
Rymark turned from his inspection of the wall to face me. “I don’t know if we can.” Something in my expression, some fear or resignation must have spurred him to continue. “The practice of war will always be an exercise in managed chaos, Lord Dura. I’ve seen great warriors die in their first battle, undone by circumstances they could never have anticipated, and I’ve seen fools live to old age after surviving countless battles and their own idiocy.”
The king’s diplomatic answer only served to confirm my fears. “How outnumbered are they?”
He shook his head. “At least ten to one.”
“They’re all going to die,” I whispered.
Rymark looked at me, a reminder one of his gifts was physical. “I heard you were a priest,” he said.
“Almost.”
“Then say a prayer or light a candle, Lord Dura. We’re not dead yet. Neither are they.”
Moments later Cesla’s men came pouring out of the fields in a wave, howling for blood, and there was no time for talking. Still favoring one leg, Bolt left to help man the wall. I moved to follow, but Gael and Rory closed ranks.
The hours passed in a series of attacks, each defended with the aid of Fess’s scouting and those who fought in the fields outside of Treflow. Untutored though I was, I understood the flow of battle. “It comes down to this,” I said.
Rory shook his head. “How can Rymark make sense of this?” he said, peering into the dark. “It’s just people running in to attack and retreating.”
“Cesla’s probing,” I said. “Rymark doesn’t have enough men to man the entire city. He’s counting on Fess to tell him where the next attack will be.”
Gael’s face blanched. “How long will it be before Cesla attacks from two directions at once?”
I’d been trying not to ask that question or even think it. “If he suspects Rymark is short on men, not long,” I said.
C
hapter 67
On the streets below us, men with torches came running from the west to climb ladders and man the wall. I edged closer to the king. “We’re halfway to dawn, Lord Dura,” he said. “Most of Lelwin’s men we put on the walls are down. We’re going to have to light the fires.”
He spoke into Toria Deel’s scrying stone, a warning for Fess and those beyond the wall. Then, at his signal, men on the parapet dropped torches. They spun and fluttered to land on piles of broken furniture and wood scavenged from the buildings in Treflow. Bluish flames licked at the naptha and oil and leapt across the dried wood. The area beyond the walls emerged from darkness accompanied by screams of frustration.
Hundreds of the cries changed into roars of pain, and grim satisfaction wreathed Rymark’s expression. He turned to me. “We may yet make it through the night.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I had Lelwin hide her men behind them, keeping them in reserve. When we lit the fires, his men were temporarily blinded.”
I looked east and west, hopeful. “Will it work again?”
“No,” Rymark said. “Not against any commander with sense, and if I was foolish enough to try I’d lose Lelwin and all the rest. We’ve put a dent in his forces on the north wall, and if Lelwin
