The masonry was old, and the ground beneath it soft: the wall was no longer perfectly vertical, and the bends and waves in the brick bulwark helped fingers and toes gain a lodgment. Rain had eroded mortar from between the courses of bricks and provided holds. Blood made my fingers slick, and the pain in my arms and shoulders was agonizing. My breath seared in and out of my throat.
After a cold, black eternity, each minute measured by inches, I found myself beneath the battlement, a stone ledge outstepped from the wall by eighteen inches, with the crenellated rampart built on top. I reached out with bleeding fingers, found a handhold, and measured it carefully. It was long enough for both my hands, and I would need both for what followed.
My heart beat in my chest like a hundred trip-hammers. I propped myself as carefully as I could, moved my second hand to the ledge, and then kicked my legs free and swung out over the gulf.
Now there was no going back. If I couldn’t climb the parapet, I would fall thirty feet to the ground below, and lie broken until I was found by reivers or rescue or frozen death.
I pulled myself up, reached a hand up, then fell back to full extension as strength fled my arms. I took a breath, then another, then another. Air flooded my lungs. I closed my eyes and concentrated only on the necessity of climbing the last few feet, but no matter how high I groped, I could not find a handhold.
I needed to reach higher, but I couldn’t pull myself up by a single hand while reaching with the other. Futility warred in my brain with useless, desperate plans, and then I thought I might swing myself like a pendulum, and at the top of the rise reach higher. I began to sway my legs left and right, building momentum with each swing but terrified that my impetus might grow so great it would tear me from my fragile handhold. Puffing like a breaching whale, I swung to the right and at the height of the movement snatched up with the right hand, reached an eroded course of brick, pulled myself up farther, snatched again. Hand over hand, one breath after another, I drew myself up again and again, mere inches each time . . . and then I was able to curl myself so as to get a foothold, and then with one great uncoiling motion I kicked myself up and through a crenellation, to land in a disordered heap on the cold flagstones of the rampart walk.
I surrendered to blackness. My senses fled, and I could only pant for breath like a beaten dog. Agony shrieked through my tormented muscles.
Gradually, through the torment, the world returned, a world of blazing fire, of clashing weapons, of breaking glass, of sobs and screams. I rolled onto my side and stared at the city with dull eyes. Silhouetted by flame, I could see the belfry of the Seven Words Monastery, the fantastic tower at the Court of the Teazel Bird, and the battlements of the New Castle. From somewhere—from everywhere—came the sounds of terror and pain.
I got an arm beneath myself and propped myself up on one elbow. The New Castle, the source of royal authority in the city and the home of the Lord Warden and his garrison of royal troops, had fallen—black flags waved from the tops of the towers. Lost with the castle was any hope of organized resistance. There was no army for me to join, and all that remained for me was the hope that I could somehow rescue my family.
I sat up and gazed around me. In the light of all the fires, the roofs of the buildings were bright as daylight, but the streets below were in deep, black shadow. The result was a perfect map of the city, black streets on a shining background. I found Sheep Street easily, the one lane that failed to follow the city’s gridiron pattern because it took flocks of sheep straight from the South Gate to the Sheep Market just off Scarcroft Square.
The corsairs had fired the thatch of many of the houses, presumably to drive the occupants out into the street where they could be taken; but not all roofs were thatch, and not all thatch buildings were alight. Just below the rampart was an old, crooked building with a thatch roof, easily reached, but with a fall of perhaps fifteen feet. The thatch was thick, however, new spar-coating simply laid on the old until it piled up centuries deep. I rose to my feet, gasped at the pain in my limbs, and then launched myself at the old house.
I made a soft landing on thatch ten feet thick, dropping down on my front, limbs spread wide. From there it was an easy climb to the next building, which had a tile roof, and then I began a run along the south side of Sheep Street, jumping from one building to the next and managing to dodge around the structures that were on fire. The roofs were so well lit that my progress was much faster than it had been when I was running from Greyson’s horsemen.
Because of the light, I was able to orient myself and run as directly for my own house as all the arson permitted. Hope began to die as I saw flames licking around the familiar carved chimneys, and suddenly I felt the weight of my own limbs, my own exhaustion, the smoke burning in my throat. I slowed, and my last steps dragged across the roof tiles as despair clawed at me.
My father’s house had been set alight—hours before, to judge by what little remained. The roof and upper storeys had fallen in, and there was nothing left but embers, charred beams, and blackened brick. The fire had spread to the thatch-roofed house next door, or perhaps the other way—both had fallen in. Bodies lay before the front door of the butcher shop, and in the ruddy light I could see the dead were Aekoi reivers. My father and the apprentices, then, had given a good account of themselves before their luck had run out.
But were they still alive? The fire might have forced the defenders into the street, where they could have been captured.
I didn’t believe it. In my heart I knew that my father would have fought to the end, wielding his pollaxe and calling on the Netweaving God.
Still, I needed to know. I was still standing in stunned stupefaction when I heard, a short distance away, the clash of arms and a shrieking of whistles.
My father, I thought, might still be alive and fighting. At once I was running along the tiles, leaped over Princess Street at a narrow place, then charged on.
My heart gave a leap as I saw a group of my countrymen, armed with pikes and swords and whatever other tools they could find, pushing toward the East Gate. There were men and women both in the crowd, thirty or forty all told, all shouting, all driving a crowd of Aekoi before them.
Shrieks went up from Aekoi whistles. They were calling to other reivers, bringing them to the fight.
I knew the band had to move quickly or they’d be overwhelmed. I cast about frantically for a weapon, then saw the roof tiles under my feet.
I heaved up a tile, threw it at one of the Aekoi, and missed. The second one missed as well. The third struck a reiver between the shoulder blades and knocked him down long enough for the defenders to reach him and trample him into the brick street.
In the meantime, the whistles shrilled, and the reivers gathered, at first hovering around the resisters, firing arrows from their short bows; but then, as their numbers rose, rushing in with swords and short naval pikes. I hurled more roof tiles, but the pirates were swarming in, the resisters’ advance had slowed to a crawl, and I felt a rising despair clutch at my vitals.
Then I looked up from levering another roof tile, and I saw one of the reivers standing on the roof across the road, aiming an arrow directly at me. I gave a startled leap just as the pirate loosed his missile, and the arrow missed me by inches, struck the tiles, and bounded off into the dark.