Jeirran fought his way to the front, pulling lesser men aside. He set his shoulder to the gate, heedless of armor digging into his shoulder. The massive gates creaked but did not open.
“Back off a pace,” yelled someone in frustration. “The bar can’t lift with you all pressing inward.”
Hands dragged Jeirran back and the gates swung apart. With a howl of triumph, savage as hunting wolves, the lowlanders redoubled their efforts, desperate to gain the gates before they could be closed.
Jeirran stumbled through the huge doors, fighting the surge of frantic men threatening to carry him past. He grabbed for an iron tethering ring, snatching at those passing him with the other hand. “We have to close the gates!” In that moment he felt sober and certain; the next he longed for the oblivion of drunkenness.
“But ours are still out there! We can’t shut them out!”
Jeirran backhanded the man with a mailed glove. “If the lowlanders get in we’ll all be deader than winter-killed birds!”
The yelling bloodlust of the lowlanders rang through the confines of the tunnel, unreasoning as a maddened dog. Jeirran pushed against the gate’s inner face, digging his heels in the dust. Others joined him, black with gore, arms hanging uselessly by their sides, some even blinded with their own blood, guided by friends and groping for a handhold. As the hinges creaked, others hovered at the narrowing aperture, dragging comrades bodily through, seizing a hand, a belt, a jerkin. Men were passed bodily along, feet barely touching ground littered with weapons, boots, bandages, pitiful fragments of once prized possessions.
New faces appeared in the gap, dark lowland eyes beneath steel-rimmed caps, burning with hot desire for slaughter and revenge. Two got through the gap, then three, then a handful. In some distant corner of his mind Jeirran realized he must surely be killed, a thought bringing not so much horror as resignation, even relief.
“Let us through!” Men from the rekin, old and young, injured and sick, rushed forward, falling on the foe with the tools of ore mill and furnacehouse. Picks and axes bit deep to crack bone and rip flesh. The lowlanders fell back and the gates were forced shut. A knot of lowland men were cut off; assailed on all sides, they soon fell. Shouts of abuse screamed frantic outside, blows hammering in vain on the ancient timbers. The great beams were rammed home in their brackets, bracing the gate against the bulk of the wall, unmoved by the furious assaults.
Jeirran slid down to the ground, gripping his hair in frustrated fists, wits in turmoil. He raised his head to find a ring of questioning faces. Some were hopeful, others doleful, some were expectant, others accusing. All were looking for answers and all were looking to him.
Jeirran scrambled to his feet, feeling a numbness in his legs. His senses seemed awry; silent anticipation on all sides was loud in his ears, drowning out the riot beyond the walls. He stumbled toward the rekin, forcing a ghastly smile, unable to frame answers to the urgent questions thrown at him. Panic threatened to overwhelm him. All this pain, all this carnage, he had started it—and for what? How could he hope to take on even a fraction of the lowlanders? Why had he urged these good and trusting people into such folly? Screams beyond the gates tore holes in the comforting delusions woven by liquor and self-deceit.
Where was Eresken? Cudgeling his bewildered wits, Jeirran headed for the side door of the rekin, heedless of the curious crowd following him. He turned to yell at them, “Let me alone, can’t you? Go ’way!” The alcohol he’d drank in heedless celebration betrayed him with slurred and broken words. Jeirran’s courage failed him and he stumbled blindly up the stairs.
The door to Aritane’s room stood ajar, a keening coming from it to ran around the rekin like a lost shade. The insane sound raised the hairs on Jeirran’s neck and the skin on his arms crimped into gooseflesh. A trickle of clotted blood pooled on the threshold like a visible curse. The nerve-rending wailing didn’t waver. Jeirran kicked wide the door but backed away from the ghastly sight within, one hand convulsively wiping his mouth and beard. Krelia hugged the lifeless Ceris to her breast, gore and filth covering them both. Her uncomprehending face was that of an animal knowing only its agony.
“What happened? What happened?” raged Jeirran. He dug vicious fingers into Krelia’s shoulder, in a vain attempt to halt her noise. All he did was jar her to an even more ear-shredding screech punctuated with noisy sobs. Her eyes remained locked on some unseen vision of horror.
Jeirran gaped at the body of Ceris’ father, baffled, retching at the butchered thing beside it. Wrenching aside an overturned table, he halted, shock stifling the breath in his throat. Blood hammered through his head so hard he thought his skull would split clean in two. Eresken was dead, face ghastly pale and head half severed.
Who was this stranger, this thin-faced man with his mixed-blood hair and distant features? Aritane had brought him, told Jeirran to take his unsupported word. Lifelong habits of self-justification and excuse reared up within Jeirran but quailed beneath the cruel lash of inescapable truths. He had urged her to summon this mountebank. He’d turned a blind eye to their unseemly fumblings, telling himself his reclaimed sister deserved to know love, scorning the strictures of Sheltya vows. But that code was necessarily harsh, treacherous memory reminded him, to ensure strict neutrality gave no one grounds to dismiss Sheltya judgment.
“Where is Aritane?” Jeirran yelled at Krelia, his useless hands jerking in impotent confusion, desperate to beat some answers from the howling bitch.
“What has happened here?” Remet stood in the doorway.
“I don’t know!” Jeirran exploded with sudden fury. “You tell me; you’re Sheltya, all knowing, all wise. Tell me what has happened! Tell me what to do! Tell me why Eresken is dead and why did I ever listen to him! Tell me where to find Aritane!”
Jeirran stormed forward, grabbing the boy’s robe and forcing him backward, fistful of gray cloth twisted at his chest, other hand lifted in a threatening fist.
Remet’s eyes were huge in his pallid face. “I have no idea where she is. I cannot find her mind,” the boy said with a tremor in his voice. “All I know is the soke is under foreign feet, the fess is surrounded and we have no way out.”
“I don’t know what to do,” screamed Jeirran, “I don’t know how we came to this. Why has it all gone so wrong?”
“I can’t answer you,” quavered Remet.
Jeirran smashed his fist into the boy’s mouth, shocking a cry of pain from the lad. As he drew back his arm for an even harder blow, Remet wrenched himself free with the unexpected strength of terror. Pausing in his flight at the top of the stairs, he wiped blood from lips gashed on broken teeth. “You’ll answer for this, for all of this. Somehow, someday, you’ll answer.”
As Jeirran took an enraged step forward, Remet’s nerve broke and the boy scrambled down the stairs. Lifting his head, Jeirran took a deep breath, straightened his back, beard jutting as he set his jaw. Walking slowly, he took the stairs at a measured pace, closing his eyes for a moment before he pushed open the door and stood on the threshold.
“Give me that.” He took an axe helve from a nearby hand, thumping it on the planks at his feet. Three times, three more and three again, the ringing blows echoed above the heads of the milling crowd and the terrified motion slowed, faces upturned, bewildered.
“Everyone who can fight must find a weapon. Those who cannot must take to the upper levels of the rekin.” Jeirran struck the wooden balustrade at his side. “Cut this away and pack the lower level with turf and timber, ready to set slow fire in case we lose the walls. Ropes will get the defenders inside if we have to hold the rekin alone.”
The crowd exchanged uncertain glances.
“We can hold this place against thrice this number of lowlanders,” Jeirran declared with bravado. “Or does Misaen no longer make Anyatimm strong, Maewelin make them wise?” A few faint smiles greeted this sally. “To work!” Jeirran urged them and slowly the people began to move, a sense of purpose soon replacing the earlier aimless fear.