May the Forest Spirit be with you, and bring you and the People swiftly to Gerhaa and victory.
Richard Blade of England
Then he rolled up the letter and coated it with wax. He picked up the other parchments he'd prepared for Swebon and along with the letter sealed them in a bronze drinking horn looted from a nearby house.
As Blade was finishing this job, Meera and the other people from the House of the Twelve Serpents arrived. Right after them came the twenty-five men chosen to escort Meera and Blade's message upriver to Swebon. Skroga was with them. Blade and Meera embraced, then the steward led her toward the waterfront. Blade had to stay at his improvised command post, but Skroga went to see them off. He returned an hour later, to report that they were safely on their way.
«On their way» didn't mean safely home, but it certainly meant they were past the biggest obstacle, the enemies around Gerhaa. There would still be raiding parties and the garrison of the camp at the river junction to be avoided, but these would soon be hearing the news from Gerhaa. When they did they'd have other things on their minds than looking for three canoes. At least Blade hoped so-and for the moment, hoping was all he could do to help Meera and her party. He turned his attention back to sorting out the situation in Gerhaa.
This situation proved remarkably hard to sort out, because the garrison put up a stubborn resistance. Some of the regular soldiers deserted, frightened or unwilling to fight beside the Protector's Pets. Very few of these joined the rebels. Most of them ran off into the countryside to hide among the farmers and hunters, or boarded sailing ships and headed out into the ocean, bound home for Kylan.
The regulars who didn't desert fought well, with a grim, sullen determination that no rabble of gladiators and the sweepings of Gerhaa's streets was going to beat them. The Protector's Pets also fought fairly well, once a few of their more useless officers managed to get themselves killed in action. One dying prisoner gave Blade a hint why.
«Emperor-thinks Protector-ambitious. He don't hold-city-Emperor has chance to-«A rattle, a gurgle, then the man coughed blood and died. Blade rose from beside the body, wishing very much he had Ho-Marn here to question. More and more he suspected that the gray-haired officer knew most of whatever political secrets lurked in the shadows of Gerhaa. More and more he was certain that knowing those secrets would increase the chances of victory for himself and the people he was leading. Unfortunately Ho-Marn was nowhere to be found alive or dead.
The Protector himself was hard at work, leading his Guardsmen and organizing the defenses of the part of Gerhaa still not in rebel hands. In his bright red leather suit and black-enameled mail shirt, he was a conspicuous object wherever he appeared. Dozens of arrows and spears were hurled at him, killing men all around him, but the Protector himself seemed to bear a charmed life.
Blade had to admit that he'd underestimated the Protector. The man might have every imaginable vice and a few better not imagined, but that didn't make him a fool. With his back to the wall, the Protector was fighting with skill and courage worthy of a far better man.
The Protector's leadership, the fighting of the men under him, and the tangled streets of Gerhaa kept the rebels from sweeping their enemies completely out of the city. By the afternoon of the second day, a solid line of barricades rose across the city, dividing the two sides as rigidly as if they'd been on separate islands. A few bold spirits on either side tried to leap from roof to roof, or slip through the cellars. They were too few to make any difference, and most of them were quickly hunted down and killed.
To balance not being able to take the whole city, the rebels did take the wall on the river side. On top of each tower along the wall was a large catapult. In the cellars of the towers were hundreds of crossbows, swords, and suits of armor, along with stones, arrows, and barrels of oil for making firepots.
Blade promptly had the weapon and armor distributed to the men the rebels had recruited in the city. The catapults were manned, and after a good deal of trial and error and a few bloody accidents, they opened fire on the ships in the harbor. Some of the tougher captains tried to brave the shower of stones and arrows, then Blade's catapult crews brought up the oil and started shooting firepots. After three ships went up in flames, the surviving captains decided discretion was the better part of valor. By nightfall all the Kylanan ships were anchored several miles from the walls of Gerhaa, and the rebels were temporarily safe from attack by either land or sea.
As this fact dawned on the gladiators, Blade began to hear the sort of mutterings he'd been afraid of from the very beginning.
«How many ships we got, down at waterfront?»
«Thirty, maybe.»
«We could all get ourselfs into 'em, then.»
«To go where?»
«Upriver, mebbe.»
«The Forest People-what they say?»
«Half o' the fighters are Forest People. Other half-well, we fight good against Kylan. Mebbe they won't mind havin' us up there with 'em.»
«I'll be thinkin' about it.»
By the time he heard basically this same conversation three or four times, Blade decided he'd better find Skroga. A crisis seemed to be in the making, and it was going to be all the worse because of the number of armed city people who'd joined the gladiators. Most of them were armed now, none of them had any place to go, and they would be furious if the gladiators started abandoning them. If the two factions of the rebels started fighting each other, they would be handing victory to the Protector on a silver platter.
Skroga was nowhere to be found, so toward midnight Blade grabbed some bread and sausage, then wrapped himself in a looted blanket and lay down in a corner of the guardhouse. He felt as if he hadn't slept at all when he awoke, to find the sky gray with dawn and someone shaking him furiously.
«Blade, Blade, wake up. Vosgu of Hosh is calling on the fighters to leave Gerhaa and go into the Forest. He is speaking in the Street of the Silversmiths. You must come!»
Blade jumped up so fast he tripped over the blanket. He untangled himself and recognized the man who'd awakened him-the son of a barrel-maker who'd joined the rebels almost at once and been mortally wounded within a few hours. The young man was sweating, but his hands and gaze were very steady.
Blade had slept in his clothes and shoes. He snatched up his sword and dagger, sheathed them, then grabbed a spear from a cluster leaning in one corner.
«All right. Let's go.»
Blade and his guide covered the mile of mud and cobblestones to the Street of the Silversmiths at a steady trot. They were still too late. By the time they arrived, Vosgu was shouting to a crowd of more than five hundred armed men. Two-thirds of them were gladiators of the Games, but around the fringes were solid clusters of men from the city. Their faces were grim, they were fingering their weapons, and a few of the bolder spirits were shouting obscenities every time the gladiators cheered.
«So what do we owe those of Gerhaa, in truth?» Vosgu was saying. «They fight beside us now, or so they say. But for years they sat and cheered our dying. Shall we forgive them all these years for two days' aid?»
«No!» one of the gladiators shouted, and his angry cry was echoed by others.
«A wise man has spoken the truth,» cried Vosgu. «Listen to him, brothers of the Games. Listen to him, then march to our ships and-«
«No!» thundered a familiar voice from a dark alley. «I say no, Vosgu of Hosh, fool and coward! Brothers, listen to me.» Skroga stepped out of the alley and shouldered his way through the crowd to the upturned barrel Vosgu was using as a platform.