Kerian knew her grumbling was pointless. Liberating the secret cache from the attic of the mayor’s palace had kept them in Bianost when they otherwise would have made straight for the safety of the woodland. Nobody had expected bandits to return so quickly or in such numbers.
“Do you fear the enemy?”
Kerian turned. Porthios was climbing the stairs to the battlement. His ragged robe flapped around his gaunt legs like the wings of the crows that infested the town. She glared at him.
“Of course I fear them! Twenty warriors and a mob of civilians against an unknown number of trained mercenaries?”
He looked away, seemingly unconcerned, and her anger grew. She yelled down to the townsfolk below, describing the red and yellow livery of the bandits the Kagonesti had stung. She was told those were the colors of Gathan Grayden.
Kerian recognized the name. She had learned a lot about conditions in Qualinesti during her brief but turbulent time as a slave. Porthios seemed unimpressed by her description of the bandit leader as the worst of Samuval’s lieutenants. He stared out over the parapet, although there was little to see. Gathan wasn’t foolish enough to parade his army for his enemies to count.
In fact, Porthios was deep in thought. The strain of taking the town, coupled with finding an unexpected bounty concealed in the mayor’s palace, had set his mind racing. He’d half expected to die liberating Bianost from Lord Olin’s yoke. The future, once confined to a narrow woodland path and a nameless death, appeared much wider. But he had to proceed carefully. He must continue to be bold, or his rebellion would be crushed by Samuval’s superior might. Yet every move had to be considered with care. The entire responsibility lay on his shoulders. Kerianseray was a patriot and a good fighter but hadn’t the finesse to guide the campaign Porthios imagined. His small force must be led with the right attitude.
A leader must ignore the petty troubles that plague lesser minds. Porthios’s divine encounter in the woodland had taught him that. He could not allow himself to be distracted by tactical problems. He must concentrate on the grand strategy. The god had shown him that only by looking beyond the obvious and the commonplace could he free his people.
A shout from the Lioness drew his attention to the Street below. The surviving bandits had made their way to other gates and were spurring for the north road. Before they reached the woods, more of their mounted comrades appeared among the trees, along with sizable companies of foot soldiers. A veritable hedge of pikes filled the road.
“Are they massing to attack?” Porthios asked.
Kerian slumped, turning to sit on the narrow parapet with her back against the stockade. “No,” she said glumly. “They’re encircling us. Grayden doesn’t need to storm the town. He can’t know how many we are, so attacking the wall would be a waste of soldiers. He’s only got to trap us here till hunger and thirst force us to yield, or until he can overwhelm us.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s what I would do.”
Grim silence reigned. Then Porthios drew a deep breath.
“We can’t allow the cache to fall into bandit hands. I’d rather see it destroyed first,” he said. “So we must fight.”
He stood. Instantly, an arrow whizzed by his shoulder, ripping his sleeve as it passed. Kerian grabbed the front of his robe with both hands and dragged him down behind the sharpened logs.
“Take your hands off me.”
She remembered the face under the mask and let go abruptly. With much affronted dignity, Porthios stood again and descended the steps to the street.
Kerian shook her head. She’d known other warriors like him. Bravest of the brave they often were, but frightening. Placing little value on their own lives, they often didn’t value anyone else’s either.
She and Nalaryn peered carefully over the barrier. Here and there, elf eyes could pick out bandit archers settling into position among the burned-out ruins of the squatters’ camp.
Telling Nalaryn to hold his place, Kerian climbed down to the street and followed Porthios back toward the town square.
Once the setting of slave auctions, executions, and Olin’s unsavory entertainments, the square was again a gathering place for the elves of Bianost. Kerian had thought most of the original inhabitants were long gone, driven out or sold away into slavery. But several hundred had gathered, eager to serve their liberator. The word had spread to gather in the square, and the sudden arrival of Gathan Grayden seemed only to whet their appetite for battle.
Porthios walked ahead of Kerian. As he entered the square, his pace slowed. The crowd of elves shifted toward him, determined to get a closer look at their benefactor.
The scene felt oddly familiar to Kerian, reminding her of Gilthas’s progress through the tent city of the exiled elves in Khur. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars was regarded as the noblest being in the world, but while his grateful subjects were welcome to approach the kindly Gilthas, none tried to accost Porthios. Curiosity and gratitude brought them near, but his forbidding demeanor arrested their enthusiasm. Scores lined the way, but not one hand reached out for his ragged robe. Their expressions were different too.
She had nearly reached the fountain in the center of the square before she identified the difference. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars represented a lofty ideal. Porthios was a reflection of each of them, the rage and shame of every elf in the subjugated lands, personified in one gaunt, shabby frame.
The slave pens had been torn down by the mob. Since then, debris and garbage had been removed from the central fountain. Seeing that, Kerian wondered aloud about restoring the flow of water.
An elf standing on the stone platform by the obelisk said, “There is no water.”
“What, none? None at all?”
He explained the feeder pipes were broken or choked with garbage. “Olin never bothered to keep them up. For months, all water has been carried in.”
“In from where?” asked the Lioness, eyes narrowing.
“From the springs in the meadow south of town.”
The squatters’ camp had grown up when traders became tired of tramping in and out of the stockade for water. They moved outside to be closer to the springs.
Kerian gestured peremptorily for Porthios to accompany her. Conscious of being watched by hundreds, he followed. They ascended the steps of the mayor’s palace.
Out of earshot of the crowd, she hissed, “Did you hear? The bandits have us cut off from our only water supply!”
“There are rain cisterns under the streets. We’ll drink that.”
Heatedly, she pointed out the cisterns were likely nearly dry after the long summer drought. Any water in them would be stagnant, an invitation to disease.
“Then we will fight and win before we get thirsty,” Porthios said.
The Lioness’s famous temper nearly broke. Porthios had achieved amazing things, but his bland indifference to their safety made her furious. All the old enmity between city lord and woodland elf welled up inside her for the first time since leaving Khur. This arrogant, mutilated noble was gambling with all their lives!
There was no telling what she might have done had not fate intervened in the person of one of Nalaryn’s Kagonesti, a female called Sky. She jogged up the steps, calling for Kerian and the Great Lord. They were wanted back at the north wall.
Kerian clutched her filthy hair with both hands. “What now?” she groaned.
“The bandits are fighting,” Sky said and took off.
Kerian took that to mean Nalaryn’s band was in peril. She headed down the steps without even looking to see whether Porthios followed.
The crowd of elves in the square peppered her with anxious questions. She fended them off but quickly realized that was a mistake.