These weren't supposed to be all the city's defenders in wartime, of course. There were the nobles and their household retainers, most of them armed and trained. They might be formidable and they would almost certainly be loyal to the Protector. Too many of them owed him too much to do anything else.
Free citizens with a certain amount of wealth were also supposed to keep weapons and be ready to turn out with them. From what Blade could see, most of these weapons were useless and most of the people didn't know how to use them. Even if they turned out, how much could they do?
What was there to bring against these defenders? There were the fighters of the Games. There were the poor, who would almost certainly fight against the Protector, whose Guard abused them for sport. There were the household slaves, who would fight almost anybody for a chance at freedom. They might not fight very well, for most of them were women, boys, or old men, but they would fight without caring about the cost to themselves. Finally there were the Forest People, however many of them could make their way down the Great River to the city.
It might be impossible to gather all these enemies and hurl them at Gerhaa, but «impossible» wasn't one of Richard Blade's favorite words. Gerhaa could be taken. Blade was as sure of that as if he'd seen the words carved on a block of the city's walls. When it was taken, the danger to the Forest People would be gone, perhaps forever and certainly for generations.
Now all he had to do was create that impossible alliance and unleash its armies against the Stone Village.
Chapter 19
Blade had been fighting on the Island of Death by day and in the bedrooms of Gerhaa by night for several weeks when one morning Skroga approached him.
«Blade, I will speak with you.»
«I am willing.»
«Where no other can hear us, please.»
Blade nodded and rose without another word. He followed Skroga past the mouth of the shaft to the surface, and on into the tunnels beyond. These were seldom visited, and the smell of mold, dampness, and decay was overpowering. Soon they were even beyond the lighted area. Skroga took a candle from his belt, lit it, and led the way on through the darkness.
Blade began to wonder why Skroga was leading him out here, alone and nearly unarmed. He had nothing but his eating knife, while the older man wore a broadsword and fighting dagger. Perhaps Blade would have the edge if he got the fight down to bare hands, but even that wasn't certain. Skroga's tribe had a system of unarmed combat similar to karate. As a young man, Skroga had been an adept, and what he'd lost since then in speed he'd gained in experience.
Finally they stopped at a place where Blade could hear water dripping and see a dark pool at the edge of the light cast by Skroga's candle. He could also see something else that made him rather wish Skroga had chosen another place to stop. At the very edge of the pool lay a white skeleton, the skull detached and crushed in by a terrible blow. Blade slowly shifted position, trying to face Skroga and at the same time keep his back to the solid rock wall.
Almost conversationally, the old gladiator said, «There are tales. Beyond this pool you find caves. Caves to give a way out to the world and freedom.»
«Do you believe that?»
Skroga shook his head. «I wish it, but no. We go out of here on the bridge to the Island, or down the dead men's holes.»
Now Blade could guess what Skroga might be suggesting. He decided to gamble on that guess being right. «There is also the tunnel between the barracks and the guardhouse. Such a tunnel goes two ways.»
«Yes, it does. But there is the guardhouse.»
Blade smiled. «And if there are no guards in the guardhouse?»
«How is this to be?»
«There are ways. I do not know any of them now, but I can look and listen for them.»
«You know you can do this?»
«Yes. I have already done it.» Blade laughed, sending harsh echoes rolling around the tunnel in the darkness. For a moment it sounded as if the earth itself was laughing. Skroga stiffened at the sound. Before the older man could recover, Blade went on in a businesslike tone.
«Skroga, I think it is time to stop playing with our words and speak like wise men. At least I know you are wise, and I hope you think I am. You want me to use my ability to move about in Gerhaa to help the fighters of the Games break out to freedom. You brought me here to ask me that, and to kill me if I refused.
«You will not have to kill me. There is nothing closer to my heart than freeing the men of the Games. I must add one thing, however. Without freeing all of Gerhaa from the Protector, the fighters cannot hope to stay free long. Once they are free of the barracks, will they go on fighting until the Protector is cast down?»
Skroga pulled at his beard with both hands, until Blade expected it to come away in handfuls. Finally he nodded. «Yes. Swine like the Protector are cursed by all the gods the fighters honor. I think the Ten Brothers will say-go on fighting. When they say this, most fighters will obey.»
«Good.» Blade suspected that in the simple process of breaking out of the barracks the gladiators might do so much damage the Protector would be finished. He was still glad that Skroga was willing to continue the fight until Gerhaa was free. Without his influence, it might be hard to persuade the gladiators to go on fighting for the benefit of the Forest People, let alone the people of Gerhaa who'd cheered their dying in the arena.
Blade saw that Skroga seemed to be expecting him to go on. «Obviously the best way to escape is to take the guardhouse by surprise, then open the doors in the tunnel. We can all get out quickly that way, faster than they can bring up soldiers to stop us.»
In answer to the implied question on the other's face, Blade shook his head. «No, I don't yet have a sure way to do this. I want a sure one, because we'll only get one chance. But I'll start looking harder now that I know I have the fighters behind me. I would have spoken of this before, but I could not be sure what would happen to me if I did.» Blade stopped as he realized Skroga was weeping silently out of sheer joy and sudden hope.
Blade waited for the old man to calm himself, then asked, «Skroga, you brought me out here to kill me if I didn't give the right answers. Have you had trouble with men like me before?»
Skroga nodded and spat savagely into the pool. «Yes. Before the Protector, there was one like you-had fun with the ladies. One of the Ten Brothers asked him the same as I asked you. He told soldiers that night. Fifteen fighters were taken and tortured to death.
«Then there was a second, three years ago. He loved men, not women. Soon he spent nights with the Protector. We are not fools, so we asked him nothing.»
«What happened to him?»
Skroga shrugged. «Only tales, nothing sure. They say he got into fight with Protector. The Protector hit him with the big staff. That was his end.» That was also a tale Blade could believe. The jeweled staff looked heavy enough to crush a man's skull like an eggshell.
«So I'm the third man to offer the fighters a way out?»
«Yes.»
«Let's hope it will be a case of 'Third time lucky'.»
Skroga seemed to recognize the saying. «Yes.»
They shook hands and turned back the way they'd come.
Blade was determined to do everything he could to break the fighters loose as soon as possible. Unfortunately, for a while it looked as if all his determination wasn't going to make much difference.
The best way to surprise the guardhouse and open the tunnel was easy to find. Directly above the mouth of the tunnel leading to the drawbridge and the island of Death was thirty feet of sheer cliff. At the top of that cliff was the end of a dark, twisting alley, closed only by a rough wooden railing. From the end of the alley, somebody could throw a rope down to the mouth of the tunnel. A few agile men could climb up that rope. After that they could slip through the back streets and alleys to the weakly-held guardhouse, surprise and kill the guards, hold the guardhouse, and unlock the doors in the tunnel. Then all hell, not to mention a thousand savage fighting men, would break loose in Gerhaa.