Everything proceeded well ahead of schedule. He had been inspecting warehouses of goods assembled since the occupation began, among them bundles of rare and expensive herbs sent over the Thails from Thailot, westernmost Quincunx city. Rann smiled wickedly as he thought of the aromatic bundles. Perhaps the smug engineers gazing through the complex ring sights of the rooftop-mounted ballistae of Kara-Est would have a few surprises as they strove to bring down their swift-winging Sky City foe. And the men of the seaport's aerial defense force, riding in light platforms beneath the living gasbags called ludintip – Rann had plans for them as well.
A high wash of shirred white clouds drifted between the City and the sun. Rann's sensitive nose sensed the promise of rain sometime that afternoon. He must expedite the loading. The Sky City eagles hated to fly in the rain, and it was injurious to their health to do so. The specially bred, intelligent birds were mighty engines of destruction, but they had definite vulnerabilities. For the birds' lungs, strained from hard flying, to breathe in cold damp air could lay them low as readily as iron darts from Estil catapults.
Rann needed his eagles if the assault of Kara-Est were to succeed. And he would have them.
'Maguerr,' he barked, not bothering to look back at the weedy journeyman mage who trotted at his heels. He scarce could stand to look at Maguerr, with his lank hair that seemed stranger to comb and soap alike, his inadequate beard, his beaklike nose with nostrils that seemed to exert an unbreakable fascination for his fingertips, his watery eyes and spiderleg fingers and pimples without number. But the boy was a genius in that special branch of magic that enabled the Sky City's forces to communicate verbally over great distances, and hence, indispensable. There were times when he annoyed Rann so much that the prince began to itch uncontrollably with the need to tie the horrid youth to some handy fixture and flay the skin from his wretched and unsightly face. Yet because of Maguerr's undeniable ability, and in a perverse way as partial penance for his own failure to make an end of Moriana and her clever groundling, Rann had attached the wizardling to himself as his personal amanuensis.
Maguerr's slippers scuffled along the cobblestones. 'Yes, Your Highness,' he whined. A tic twitched beneath Rann's left eye.
'Pick up your feet when you walk,' he rapped, 'and for Istu's sake try to learn not to talk through that damned proboscis of yours.'
'Yes, milord.' Maguerr's tone was obsequious and unruffled by his master's brusqueness.
Rann bit back a curse. He saw the slight head motions of the three escorts who walked before him. The prince seldom had need to raise his voice, yet here he was on the verge of screaming at his own secretary. Rann knew quite well that his Guards made sport of him, and he promised silently they would pay for it. At the same time, he toted up yet another debit owing to Maguerr, a debt he planned to collect with the most usurious interest once the mage was no longer necessary to his plans. It had been long since his taste for torture had been sated.
'Take a memorandum,' Rann said. 'To Her Excellency Gomi Ashentani, Governor of Bilsinx by grace of Synalon i Etuul, Mistress of the Clouds, First among the Skyborn, of the Dark Ones Most Favored, and all the other usual honorifics.' He chopped the air with one hand.
Behind him Maguerr murmured to himself, impressing the words on his spongelike mind. Among his other unbearable attributes was numbered an eidetic memory. Rann gritted his teeth and continued.
'Milady Governor: You are hereby instructed to dispatch the ground forces left at your disposal, holding back a suitable reserve, to Kara-Est by no later than nightfall -'
Although Bilsinx was not just a conquered city but a thoroughly subjugated one, the hands of Rann's three Guards rested on sword pommels, and their eyes were never still. Bowstring-taut alertness was the rule of the Sky Guard elite, and even though they expected no trouble they scanned the street and storefronts with eagle-sharp eyes. They made no idle chatter; Rann would not permit it. They allowed themselves a measure of relief that the prince, impatient with crowds clogging the main thoroughfares, had chosen this side-street where no assassin could sidle to dagger range of Rann in the anonymity of a mob. But they allowed themselves no laxity.
Yet it was the prince's sharp eyes that caught the telltale gleam of sunlight on steel in a doorway ahead and to the left.
'Down!' he shouted, hurling himself to one side, tucking in his shoulder and rolling to the stoop of a shuttered bakery, closed by the Governor's Ashentani's rationing decrees. When Rann came to rest, his scimitar glistened in a wicked arc from his left fist.
The Guardsmen's honed reflexes snapped at Rann's command. But not quickly enough. Arrows whined, went home with deceptively soft sounds. Sword in hand, a Sky Guardsman sank to his knees, eyes fixed on the red fletched shaft sprouting between them. Beside him a comrade choked on the steel point embedded in his throat. 'Get the bastards!' a harsh voice cried.
A man and a woman broke from the cover of doorways on opposite sides of the street and cast aside shortbows. The man straightened his left arm, causing a hornbull hide buckler strapped to his forearm to slide into his hand. His other hand brought forth a broadsword. The woman drew forth forth a rapier and maingauche with identical fretwork hilts. Two more men materialized behind them, weapons in hand. A fifth figure stepped from a farther doorway as the remaining Sky Guardsmen ran to engage the killers.
Rann gained his feet. He started forward in a crouching glide, only to stop and clutch at his chest as agony shot through him. 'Dark Ones!' he gasped, 'I've torn something loose!'
He had undergone terrific punishment in recent months. Broken ribs had been his reward when he sought to interpose himself between a raging Vicar of Istu and his helpless queen. His chest barely wrapped with bandage before he was off in the saddle again, Synalon had ordered him to Athalau and a nearer brush with death. An immense block of ice had fallen from the vaulted roof of the living glacier in which Athalau lay, striking down Rann and the Sky Guardsmen who had trailed Moriana, Fost Longstrider, and their treacherous spirit companion, Erimenes. Only the wildest luck had prevented the prince from being mashed into red gruel by the ice fall. And only the fierce, driven vitality and determination of the man and his lineage had enabled him to survive, with a dozen bones shattered and a score of muscles torn loose.
He had the best healing sorcery of the Sky City; but not even the peerless mages of the Soaring World could make him altogether whole again in the short time alloted them.
Conquest for queen and City had repeatedly called him forth half mended, still hurt and hurting. Now his wounds betrayed him. He fought for balance as blackness veiled his senses.
'Your Highness!' he heard Maguerr call in alarm.
Rann struggled against the darkness threatening to swallow him. He saw his remaining bodyguard surge forward to perform his duty. With a musical skirl, the Guardsman's curved blade met the straightsword assassin. The woman with the rapier circled, watching for an opening. The next two assassins went wide to bypass the combatants, making for the prince with deadly intent shining on their faces.
'Come forward and meet your death, dog lover,' snarled the Guardsman, Ahue. 'At least you'll know a good death from City steel.'
The assassin was a good man, strong wristed and supple, but his foe was of the superbly trained Sky Guard. Ahue's scimitar beat the larger blade aside. The killer screamed shrilly as the caress of steel severed veins and tendons of his swordarm. His blade fell, ringing on the cobblestones as his cry drowned in blood bubbling from slashed throat. Before he fell, the Guardsman was lunging for the woman, launching a vicious hail of blows that she was hard-pressed to fend off despite her paired weapons. 'Your turn, bitch,' Ahue cried, recovering to slash out again.