All thoughts and fancies to digest
For idleness
Is chief mistress
Of vices all;
Then who can say
But mirth and play
Is best of all?
I put on my apprentice cap and pulled the brim down over my ears against the cold wind. I would have an hour or two of sleep, I supposed, before reporting to Lawyer Dacket’s for my day of copying.
I judged the harbor entrance by the stars, turned the boat for Ethlebight, and only then noted the glow some distance inland. It wasn’t the moon, which had set; and the sun would rise east, not north. I had seen the aurora on cold winter nights, but the aurora was shifting color, massed spears of light that advanced and retreated, and this light was steady. I stood, but could see no detail over the sea of reeds that stretched between my boat and the city.
Fire, it was fire. Anxiety gnawed at my mind.
The tide was coming in: water gurgled beneath the counter as the boat flew toward home. The glow grew brighter as I neared the city, and I saw red reflected on the undersides of scattered clouds. In growing fear I sped from channel to channel. I thought that in the blustering wind I heard clattering, and screams, and I hoped the sounds were only my own fancies.
At last the reed curtain fell away, and I saw my city on fire, flames silhouetting the towers and battlements of Ethlebight’s wall, and the main channel of the Ostra black with an enemy fleet.
CHAPTER THREE
I stared in amazement so complete that it left no room for fear. I had been gone eight or ten hours, and in that time, a fleet had poured like the tide into the harbor and the city had fallen.
Screams. Shots. A sudden rising spout of fire so tall that it overtopped the walls, the flare as a roof fell in.
There was a hissing in the air, a splash beyond. I realized I’d come too close to the enemy, and someone on deck had loosed an arrow. The fear that had been delayed came rushing into my head, and I put the tiller over, and heard the lugsail bang overhead as the boat lost way.
Enemy ships crowded the piers, had grounded on the shore. There was no place where I could land.
Another arrow buzzed overhead and then skipped away over the water like a stone. I fumbled for the sheet, the sail filled with wind, and I raced back into darkness, away from the consuming red light.
My family. My city. On fire.
Panic flayed my nerves, and my mind seemed to chatter like a broken cog in a decrepit mill. I couldn’t imagine what to do. I had no weapons, no armor. Nothing but a small knife to cut bread and cheese, that and a boat I’d borrowed from a friend.
I looked more closely at the enemy ships. Chebecs, I thought, with two or three masts and a raking, jutting bowsprit, capable of traveling under oar or sail, small enough to get up the channel that guarded the city. I had seen chebecs come in and out of port all my life, most bringing wines and silks and spices from the old Empire of the Aekoi.
But never in these numbers. What was moored in the port was a pirate fleet, manned by gold-skinned reivers from the edges of the empire, cities ruled by warlords and brigands, sometimes with the support of the emperor, sometimes without. Pirates such as these had raided the coasts of Duisland in the past, but not in years, not since well before I was born.
And never had Ethlebight fallen to a raid, nor had the city even been menaced in decades, not since the harbor had begun to silt and the entrance become too difficult for a stranger to navigate. Half the attacking fleet should have run aground within a quarter mile of the bight’s entrance.
Screams. Shots. Another gush of flame. I could not sit and watch, not while my family was in danger.
A passage opened in the reeds and I took it. I knew most of the channels, having boated and fished in them since I was a boy, and I was reasonably certain this one led to the salt marshes southeast of the city. The salt marshes were empty at night save for flocks of sheep and their shepherds, but they would also be empty of reivers.
I ran the boat aground on mud, threw out the anchor, and then slogged through reeds and calf-deep mud till I came to the boggy meadows south of the city. The effort had me straining for breath by the time I reached something like solid ground, and then I moved as fast as I could force my limbs. Ooze spurted from my shoes at every step. Urgency dragged me on. The air smelled of salt grass and smoke.
Red light winked through the South Gate, the smallest gatehouse on the wall, built for the convenience of the shepherds and fishermen who lived in or near the marsh. The gate was open, and I increased my pace.
I slowed again as I saw firelight glint on swords and pikes, and I realized that the gate had been opened from the inside by the reivers, who had gathered outside and hoped to tempt desperate citizens to run out and be captured.
Captured to be slaves. For the reivers were here for loot, certainly; but as far as they were concerned, most of the city’s wealth walked on two legs.
From somewhere in the city came the cry of shrill whistles. I retreated into the darkness, then began a circumnavigation of the walls, loping eastward in hopes of finding an unguarded rampart. Fantasies clawed at my brain: find a reiver alone, knock him on the head, take his weapons. Kill more reivers, free the captives, put together an army and retake the city . . . I knew perfectly well the fancies were absurd, but I couldn’t stop them from flooding my mind.
I remembered Captain Hay’s willow whip on my shoulders during the Beating of the Bounds eight years before: here before me was the Broad Tower, the Blue Tower, the Tower of Prince Peter. Beyond the Blue Tower, I thought, there was Sheep Street, which led at an angle into the city and intersected Princess Street. If I got into Sheep Street, it would take me almost all the way home.
As water squelched from my shoes, I dragged myself across the boggy ground and approached the base of the wall. I saw movement on the towers, though I could not be certain whether the people I saw were friends or slavers. There was no indication that anyone on the walls saw my approach across the dark ground. I came to the rampart and raised a hand to touch the cold, wet, dark brick. The wind whistled around the battlements far overhead. Another scream rose on the air, and I leaned my forehead against the wall, closed my eyes, and hoped that the sound was only the wind.
The fantasies that bled into my brain had grown lurid and horrible, graphic accompaniment to the sound of screams and the crackle of burning. My head snapped up and my eyes opened. Whatever the truth was, it could not be as horrible as my imagination. I needed to see for myself.
I looked up and desperately hoped to see something that would help me scale the wall. I could see the dark silhouettes of plants and shrubs growing out of the brick face, and I moved back and forth along the wall, in hopes of finding something like a vegetable ladder that would help me rise. In the darkness, I couldn’t see well enough to choose a path, and so I cast off my heavy cloak, reached for a small bush overhead, seized it with both hands, and hauled myself up. The bush bent under my weight and showered my face with a spatter of frigid dew. My right shoe found lodging somewhere in the courses of brick, and I pushed myself up, the rough brick scraping against the front of my doublet. One hand groped upward, found a fingerhold, pulled until the left foot could prop itself against the bush and propel me farther up the wall.
The wall was thirty feet high, and the battlement on top jutted out over the wall. I tried not to think of how far I had to go, and instead clawed upward with both hands. I found grass and moss growing out of the wall, and it tore away before it would support me. Then I found another grip for my fingers, and pulled myself up just far enough to reach with my fingertips the bole of a small tree. The hard leather sole of my right shoe found a purchase and helped me climb a few inches more.