«Listen to me!» he shouted again. «Do not heed this man. He would curse you all. What god will aid men who abandon their friends? What god will not curse them? Answer that, any of you!»
«Are the city people our friends?» someone shouted. He sounded uncertain rather than angry.
«Who else?» replied Skroga. «Do you expect mercy from the Protector.» That drew laughter.
«The Forest People-«began someone else. Skroga snorted in derision.
«The Forest People! Many of you were once of the Forest. What do you say to a man who asks you for help, if he deserts friends on a battlefield? What do you think wise chiefs like Swebon will say if you come now?» There were mutterings, and Blade heard at least one man say, «Mebbe he's right. Don't much like city people, but if we have to stay….»
Skroga sensed he had the audience shifting toward him. He stepped forward, turning his back to Vosgu as he did so. The man on the barrel acted so swiftly that Blade couldn't even shout. His sword slashed down, easily cutting through Skroga's leather cap and into his skull.
I should have killed that bastard when I had the chance, thought Blade. Then he let out a roar that turned every head in the crowd toward him. His arm came up and then his spear was standing out from Vosgu's chest. The man dropped his sword, looked wildly around him as if he couldn't believe what had happened, then toppled off the barrel.
Before Vosgu stopped twitching, Blade pushed his way through the stunned crowd and sprang up on top of the barrel. He pointed to Skroga and then to Vosgu's body. Those gestures were enough to keep the crowd silent as he spoke.
«Skroga, the man we all honored, has been murdered. His murderer is also dead. That murderer was once one of us before he became a traitor and a fool, but Skroga still died fighting for our freedom. For all our freedoms-fighters of the Games, city men, and Forest People. Skroga made no difference among them. Certainly the Protector will not. Can we do less?»
By then Blade knew he had his audience. In only a few more minutes, Blade knew the fighters of the Games would stand by Gerhaa to live or die with the city in battle against the Protector.
Chapter 21
There was plenty of dying before the battle was over, but not immediately. In fact, the two sides settled down to what seemed more like an armed truce than a war.
The Protector's forces held about a third of the city itself, and all the settled countryside beyond it. The rebels held about two-thirds of the city, including the riverside. The rebels couldn't break out, but the Protector's troops couldn't get in. The rebels' barricades were as strong as the Protector's, and while the armed city people weren't particularly good soldiers, they were desperate. Behind barricades they could fight well enough to delay any attack until the fighters of the Games came up. Then the balance shifted, because one trained fighter of the Games was worth two regular soldiers or three of the Protector's Pets.
So the Protector couldn't get at the rebels and the rebels couldn't get out of Gerhaa. The catapults on the towers along the waterfront kept the Protector's fleet from closing in and launching an attack on the cliff. At the same time, the catapults of the fleet sank many of the rebel ships tied up along the quays. Blade was very glad he'd sent off Meera and her escort in the first few hours of the rebellion.
Holding the countryside meant the Protector's men wouldn't run short of food or water. Fortunately for the rebels, Gerhaa was normally stocked with several months' worth of food, and they'd captured most of the warehouses and wells. Blade worked out a system of rationing, and he expected it would be at least two months before any of the rebels really started getting hungry.
Unfortunately, hunger wasn't the greatest enemy. At the moment the Protector was short of reliable men. He had the survivors of the original garrison, both Guard and regular, plus the nobles and wealthy merchants who'd armed themselves. He was keeping most of the latter out patrolling the countryside, since most of them had horses but few of them could face the fighters of the Games in battle. The Protector couldn't afford to lose men, so he couldn't afford to take many chances.
All this would change when the fleet from Mashom-Gad arrived with the Protector's reinforcements. Then he'd have enough ships and men to launch attacks on the rebels in two or three places at once, and enough trained soldiers to match the fighters of the Games. He'd even have enough siege equipment to hammer away at the rebel-held parts of the city for days before he launched the attacks. Blade wasn't sure the rebels' courage would survive such a bombardment.
When the fleet from Mashom-Gad finally did arrive, it was closer to fifty ships than forty, and some of them were huge vessels flying the Imperial banner of Kylan. Two days later the rebels captured their first prisoner from the reinforcements, and the situation began to look even more complicated. At least a thousand of the reinforcements were regular soldiers of the Imperial army of Kylan, under one of the Emperor's toughest generals. They kept very much to themselves, and the regular soldiers of the garrison of Gerhaa were beginning to look to the general rather than the Protector for leadership.
At least the prisoner said so, although Blade wasn't ready to believe all of it. Prisoners in every war in every Dimension tended to say what they thought their captors would like to hear. On the other hand, the bad blood between the regulars and the Protector's men was certainly a fact. The arrival of Imperial reinforcements could have made it worse, and if it had-
Unfortunately, there was a catch to this. Fear that matters were slipping out of his control could drive the Protector to drastic action. So could a desire to retrieve his rather battered reputation by leading a successful attack on the city.
The race against time was still on. If anything, it was getting tighter. Would Swebon lead the tribes of the Forest People down the Great River before the Protector led his reinforced army against the rebels of Gerhaa?
Swebon heard the drums begin to beat before he stepped out of his hut. As he walked toward the riverbank, they grew louder. He'd never heard so many drums beating all together, and that was no surprise. Never in all the years men had lived in the Forest had so many warriors been gathered together in one place. Never had warriors of all the Great Tribes and many of the small ones gathered together in peace. Never had any warriors gathered to sail upon the Great River and make war against Gerhaa the Stone Village. The night was warm, but Swebon shivered at the thought of what was happening in the Forest.
It did not all begin with Blade, as some of the chiefs and priests and many of the warriors thought. No one saw it at the time, but it really began when the Protectors of the Stone Village began to strike hard blows at the Forest People. Yet Swebon knew that he hadn't seen that himself before Blade came to tell him, so perhaps everything did begin with Blade after all.
Certainly without Blade, this gathering of the warriors of the tribes of the Forest would not be as it was. They could not hope to travel by night, if he hadn't taught them to make the sticks against the Horned Ones. There were many of those sticks in each of the five hundred canoes drawn up along the river's bank tonight.
They wouldn't have the strong bows, if Blade hadn't gone into the Forest and found the woods and boiled the kohkol sap. It was unfortunate that there weren't enough of these bows to give one to every warrior sailing against the Stone Village. The bows were not hard to make once a man knew how. Swebon himself was a warrior, not a carpenter, yet he'd made three. Meera had made two. But with everything else that had to be done, there was only time to make strong bows for one man in four. That might still be enough, because only the best archers of each tribe carried the strong bows.