Poradz felt hot blood spray on his face. He cried out and staggered back. More and more of them were leaping onto the bridge. Huge jumps. Clearing his wards easily. Part of him admired the grace with which they moved. Most of him was too terrified to pull the shape of a spell together to help himself or anyone.
He could already hear some of his comrades running. Poradz backed away. One of the elves approached him, quick, like he was gliding. Poradz felt an impact to his temple. Another to his gut. And one of exquisite pain that broke his left knee. He screamed and fell, tried to scrabble away.
The rest were all running but the elves were so fast. Poradz saw his comrades engulfed. Cut down. The sheer speed of the elves’ limbs when they struck registered in his agonised mind. They barely paused in their stride either. Like a dance. Poradz stopped trying to move. His knee was a sheet of pain and he thought he was going to throw up.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and threw him over onto his back. The scruffy one was looking down at him, curious, like a predator seeing new prey for the first time. Poradz shuddered at the gaze. There was intelligence there but something else too. Like bits of his mind were elsewhere and he couldn’t stare with the whole of both eyes.
The elf spoke. Poradz hadn’t bothered learning elvish and didn’t catch a word of it. The elf put a hand on his head, the other on his chest. The elf breathed in deep and nodded. He said something more, nodded again and walked away. Another elf took his place.
This one had blood-slick blades in her hands. Estok took his cells left to head away through the yards and round the marsh, meaning to track the coast all the way to the dockside. With him went two of the reserve cells. The other reserve cells moved along the main road before disappearing into the back streets to come to their starting positions.
Katyett led the main force across the dark fields, where the grain grew tall and dense. Takaar was ahead of them all, ensuring their path was safe. Where the stems thinned before the first buildings of Frey-Ultan, the district dominated by farmers and farm workers, they could see the four columns of smoke that signified the occupation of Shorth by its high priest.
Katyett wondered if Llyron remained free or was languishing in one of the cells below the temple. Those reserved for the elves of mixed thread for assessment of their suitability or otherwise for service. Maybe she was dead. Somehow Katyett doubted that. Llyron would not have been slow to point out that, without a high priest of Shorth, no order would remain among the elves. Humans didn’t want riots; they wanted subservience.
The temple piazza bordered the rainforest at the south-eastern edge of the city. It was protected from the forest’s lust for expansion by the River Ix, which plunged through a sheer cleft in the earth that ran for two miles, upstream to the borders of the Olbeck Rise and downstream to the rapids at the Ultan bridge. It had a crossing, known as the Senserii Approach. This was a grand wooden structure, beloved of pilgrims because it was the most direct route to the piazza from the canopy.
Myth held that the first Senserii, or those who became the first Senserii, had used it to escape persecution in their villages and towns deep inside the forest, taking sanctuary in Shorth as was their right. It made a good story, but Katyett preferred to believe that the first Senserii had been the results of mixed unions in the slums of Banyan and Valemire in the west of the city and been dumped at Shorth unwanted and unloved.
‘I wonder what’s happened to them?’ she said.
‘Who?’ asked Grafyrre.
‘The Senserii,’ she said.
They were moving through the fringes of the grain fields, their passage barely moving a stalk. Takaar had slowed dramatically. Katyett trilled a warning, using the sound of a common swift. Behind her, the TaiGethen stopped.
‘We could do with them right now,’ said Grafyrre.
‘Not if they remain loyal to Llyron,’ said Katyett.
‘They will have had little choice despite what Pelyn thinks,’ said Merrat.
They moved up to Takaar’s shoulder where he was crouched with Marack and Auum. Katyett could almost taste the unease of her people behind her. The mistrust of their former Arch. But this time Takaar wasn’t muttering. Katyett waved her Tai to crouch. The walls of the temple of Orra were close. Twenty paces across open ground and a drainage channel. Takaar spoke.
‘They have set their castings right along the boundary and across the entire span of the bridge on the outside of the rails. They are all over the walls and probably on the roofs of Appos, Orra and Gyal. Cefu too. I can’t see anything around Shorth. We’re too distant.’
‘Can we jump them? Weave through them?’ asked Katyett.
‘Not this time. They’re too well placed. I suspect they’ve withdrawn any guard to the central lawns and are using the castings as early warnings.’
‘So where’s our way in?’ asked Katyett.
‘We’re going to have to go straight up the Path of Yniss,’ said Takaar.
‘That’s going to make silent approach a little tricky. Why not the other side of the piazza?’
‘You think it’ll be any different?’
Katyett stared at Takaar. ‘Wait for Estok to get going. Then we move.’
Chapter 38
Move yourself away from the ula who tells you he is not frightened of battle. Corsaar peered over the apex of a pitched roof directly opposite the Al-Arynaar barracks. His heart was racing. It had led him to send his two spare TaiGethen to warn Estok to stall his attack if they could get to him in time.
‘This can’t be right,’ he whispered. ‘What are they doing?’
Hundreds of men crowded the barracks training grounds. Lights burned in every window. Corsaar could see warriors drilling and mages working with small squads of swordsmen, practising. Looking down the hill, along the Path of Yniss, he could see lines of lights. Hundreds, thousands of torches.
The lights stretched right down to the harbour and turned corners into every quarter of the city. Corsaar could see the glow of lights rising above the rooftops. And there were soldiers lining the roads under the torches. The elves had known the city would be under curfew but this was something more.
‘It’s like a prison,’ said Everash, Corsaar’s second.
‘It’s worse than that. Looks to me like none of them are asleep. It’s the middle of the night.’
‘Katyett said they’d be expecting us.’
‘But not to this extent,’ said Corsaar. ‘They’re ready aren’t they? All of them.’
Thrynn moved up the steep roof with his Tai. Corsaar saw the expression on his face before he shook his head.
‘It’s bad, Corsaar. We’ve been on the ground and on the roofs. They’re everywhere. Areas of the city are cordoned off. We assume there’s magic along some boundaries, and everywhere else there are men and mages. We haven’t seen a single elf. There are no lights bar those the humans have lit. It’s so silent down there. What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know. But we could get in big trouble very fast. We need to warn Katyett. They’ve-’
Light blossomed down on the dockside. Orders were barked in the barracks yard. At least a hundred men and mages ran out, heading for the harbour. Corsaar cursed.
‘Thrynn, get to Estok. Get him out of there. Get back to the forest. I’m going to the piazza. This isn’t going to end well.’ The light of a spell bloomed to the north. Katyett signalled they move up. Behind them came the noise of marching and shouting from the direction of the barracks away down the street. Ahead of them was the double entrance to the temple piazza. The Path of Yniss split around the tower temple of Cefu, running left past the low dark-painted walls of Appos, and right past the spectacular murals and living stone of Tual.