Dunos and I entered a small circular courtyard centered on a fountain. Two men wearing the crest of the Free Ixunite Company had pinned a woman against the fountain. Her husband lay in a knot of his own entrails. Two wide-eyed toddlers cried silently, hidden in the shadow of an overturned wagon.
Jaedun sizzled through me. I crossed to the fountain, hamstringing the first man, then harvesting his head. His accomplice turned, eyes wide. His gaze shifted from me to the stumps of his handless arms. That was the last thing he saw before he fainted in a pool of hot arterial blood.
A dozen Ixunites occupied the courtyard’s southern half. They gave up looting and came at us, swords bared. I spun into them, both blades flashing. Muscles tore and ligaments popped as razored steel slid through. Gasps and groans, curses running into gurgles. and screams warred with the clatter of metal, as swords dropped from nerveless fingers or in the grasp of severed hands.
Two of the men went for Dunos. There was no mistaking him for a man. He was a child, and a crippled one at that. They decided he would be easier to kill than I, proving they were, in fact, more stupid than they looked.
Dunos, though small and early in his formal training, had seen much combat. He dodged left, blocking one man with his companion. Dunos caught the first man’s overhand slash on his sword, then darted in. He stabbed his dagger into the first man’s groin. Blood gushed bright red. The man stumbled back. Dunos ducked low, sweeping a leg out. He caught the man’s heels, sending him over backward.
The other coward, watching his friend’s life spurt out, hesitated.
Dunos lunged, striking like a cobra. His sword slipped beneath the man’s breastplate and into his guts. The boy wrenched his sword hard, then yanked it out. The man coughed his last words into a bloody cloud, then flopped lifeless to the cobblestones.
Dunos’ second foe hit the ground about the same time as the last pieces of mine. The woman had crawled to where her children cowered. The tinkling of the fountain’s water covered most other immediate sounds, save for the ordered stamp of soldiers blocking all avenues of escape.
Count Linel Vroan entered the square, accompanied by two of the gyanrigot. They’d been constructed of wood and shaped like mantises. Though not as heavy as their metal counterparts, their footsteps still shook the ground. They flanked the leader of the Ixunite troops.
The tall man bowed. “Virisken Soshir, I remember you. Will you allow me to please my master, or will you force me to regretfully offer him your corpse?”
Prince Cyron snarled. He looked south from the heights of Shirikun. “How can they have breached the walls so quickly?”
Count Jarys Derael sat immobile in his wheeled chair. “Nelesquin has something new. We must hope to find vulnerabilities, or all is lost.”
Cyron raked fingers back through his hair. “My city. We can do nothing.”
“We have prepared well, Highness.”
“They are through the wall. There is a fire in the southeast. It could consume everything.”
“It is unlikely Nelesquin will let it rage. He wins nothing if it does.”
“But how can he…” Cyron shook his head. “The vanyesh, yes. Perhaps they used their magic to bring the gates down.”
“If they are that bold and that foolish, then all is lost no matter what we do.” The count flicked a finger. “Please, we have a decision to make.”
Cyron turned the wheeled chair toward the massive map spread over the center of the tower’s floor. Cyron’s grandfather had credited his penchant for playing with toy soldiers as the source of his military acumen. Toys had been painted to represent the various units stationed throughout the city and placed appropriately on the map.
“Highness, we must assume that the units at the gates are gone or soon will be gone. Likely our second line of defense as well. We can already see people coming over the bridges.”
Cyron glanced back south. The nine bridges were choked with refugees. Here and there a cart was pitched over the side. Occasionally a body fell from the spans.
“Perhaps we should have evacuated everyone.”
The count’s voice came in a firm whisper. “We could not have anticipated Nelesquin’s weapons. He did not have them at Tsatol Deraelkun. He did not have them five days ago.”
Cyron shook his head. “But we knew he was coming.”
“It does not matter. It would have been wrong to evacuate everyone.”
“How can you say that?”
“Prince Cyron, I lived my entire life in a fortress. My sole reason for living has been to kill the enemy. Those who lived with me knew no quarter would be asked or given. Had Tsatol Deraelkun fallen, survivors would have been slaughtered. To assume it would be any less here is folly.”
The Prince frowned. “Because everyone is at risk, we shouldn’t make them safe?”
“No. We are at war. To allow any segment of the population to pretend it is safe is dangerous. It makes defending the nation a task for warriors alone. People come to regard them as they might gardeners or other servants. They allow themselves to become insulated from the reality facing them. Either a people is united behind a leader to guarantee the destruction of its enemies, or its effort is futile. If anyone is allowed to think he is exempted from involvement, the war is lost.”
Cyron regarded the sharp-eyed man trapped in a dying body. “There are a lot of children out there.”
“And we shall mourn every single dead child. Our job is to determine how we can best prevent the enemy from killing them.”
Cyron nodded and turned back to the window. He gazed out at the city. He saw it less as a collection of stones piled one on the other than as a web. To the south, strands were fraying and snapping. The city took on a glow-at least the parts of it his forces still controlled-and the disease that was Nelesquin’s invasion darkened the edges.
The bridges over the Gold River, the high arches with their blue gyanrigot lights, they glowed the strongest.
“People produce that glow.”
“Did you say something, Highness?”
“Thinking out loud.” He returned to the map. “We have no choice. We recall our third and fourth lines across the river, then we cut all the bridges save one: the Dragon Bridge.”
Count Derael closed his eyes. “We will get as many people across as we can first, but you are right, this must be done.”
“And so it shall be.” Cyron sighed and waved a clerk forward. “We’ll cut the bridges and anyone caught on the far side, may Grija be kind when he welcomes them into the Underworld.”
Through the book, Keles measured the enemy advance. He clutched the oversized folio against his chest and waved his cousins from the tower. They ran with arms full of charts and maps and diagrams. As long as Keles had his Secret Atlas, he could re-create anything that was lost.
And make sure nothing that has been created will be lost.
His cousins had worked tirelessly. In three days they had largely completed the world atlas. The pages came to him swiftly, and it seemed that each cartographer had pushed to make his chart better than any other. They worked together, adding illustrations and bold legends. Some of the youngest clerks wrote out notes from Jorim’s adventures, and even Qiro’s, which were bound into the atlas in the right places.
Keles had mentioned the project in passing to his mother, and she noted that it was a pity that they’d not done the work on paper made from plant fibers native to the appropriate places. She had some of the plants in the tower garden-the portion of it not yet overrun with tzaden — so they pressed petals between sheets and used some oils to provide scents.
He had to make the world of the book as real as possible. He needed everything-sight, scent, texture, folktales, all the things that gave a place its unique identity. As the pages came in, he studied them and bound them himself. Only he knew all that the book contained, but his cousins were certain they could reproduce their pages. It was this task they were set upon completing when the enemy hit the walls, and the horns and drums from the north sounded a general retreat.