No cart to help him over the wall this time. He stopped the horse, climbed up into the saddle and got a knee onto its back.
It moved. He tugged back on the reins, centered his weight, and got it stopped and mostly steady for the moment. Not so high a wall. Not so impossible, if the damned horse would quit edging forward on him.
Stand, dammit!
He looked up, tugged the rein again and figured on a single instant of stability.
He tucked up further in the scantly flexible armor, got his foot braced, damning the shin-guards, and reined the horse to a momentary stop again.
And thrust up on that foot and jumped from a startled, shying horse, for a belly-down landing on the top of the garden wall.
He rolled off, fast, and plummeted. Not the same distance down. He knew that the instant he had gone. Further.
Thump!
Onto a paved terrace, between two potted pines.
He lay still a moment getting his wind back and finding out if his shoulder was broken. Then he got himself up on his hands and knees and stood up quietly, taking his bearings on the house across the paved terrace, the way down to the scullery access.
There were dead men down there, like puddles of shadow.
He crept gingerly down the slope, keeping an eye to the scullery and the sheds there, and edged along the wall to reach for the gate-latch.
It was already unlatched.
The damned little bitch!
Chapter Twenty-two
Shoka crept back along the wall, up to the next terrace, familiar territory. Beside the potted pines and up again, but not toward the house itself, with its terraces and its archers. The main court had to lie near the main gate, and in his mind Shoka could see the front gate from the inside, men running for horses and for defensive vantages the moment the watchmen advised them of movement up the street.
The defenders might well, then, choose to vacate the headquarters and break for the north gate with a weight of numbers that might force a passage to the Cheng'di road—with the gold, with the Emperor, with their alliances to foreign kings—every asset that would mean disaster to the Empire.
And a fool of a girl was loose somewhere on the grounds trying to assassinate one of the two men on whom everything depended.
Curse the decision that had left Taizu with his bow and Wengadi and Panji with the other two, and his own short-sightedness that had not even thought about equipping himself to do more than pull a fool out of a death-trap—
Ill-thought, ill-prepared, ill-done from the start. He was bruised and exhausted and confounded by the erratic moves of his own allies. His wits were fraying, he was tired, dammit, and people on his own side made him move again and again and again—there was a limit. He knew he was beyond it.
How in hell did she get through the streets?
How in hell did she get in here without raising an alarm? She's too short to do what I did.
If I knew where she got in I might know where she is.
No, no need to wonder. Find Ghita, find Gitu, that's where she is.
If they haven't found her first.
No bow, none with the dead men back there; so the work had to be close-in, and that meant mixing in with the mercenary guard around the house.
Close-in enough to reach Ghita, who knew his face as well as Beijun did, damn right he knew it; and he had to beat a fool kid to it.
He kept low as he crossed the terraces, and dropped off the wall of the highest to a soft slope under the shade of pines, slipped down a path and around the meanderings of a hedge. He heard horses, beyond the shoulder of the house, and where the hedge ended he saw lanterns, the front gate, and the great courtyard of the estate, where the gate let in on a paved expanse large enough for the hundreds of horses that were gathered there, and up onto the delicate garden-slopes—everywhere an animal could stand.
Men were running to the gates. Whoever had come in to join them had arrived at the front with a great deal of commotion in the street, but no attack. There were too many horses inside to admit more riders, but the gates opened a crack and they began to file inside all the same, riders crowding up into the gardens on this side of the courtyard.
Staying mounted, most all of them. Preparing for an imminent breakout, then.
Dammit, no sign of Reidi. Ghita's lot were organizing, doubtless moving on the street to clear the buildings nearby of rebel archers who might have made things difficult and given Reidi and his men some help—and the group which had gone back after Reidi had no idea what else had come in. If Reidi came with only his own company—
Where in hell is Feiyan and Hainan? Chewed to rags in the streets, pinned down? Chasing some damn ragtag down the east road? How did they let a whole damn wing loose to come back here?
Dammit to bloody hell, where are they? They should have been chasing up this company's backside.
Kegi. Bloody hell, Kegi's probably haring off to Cheng'di, Ghita's set him a lure and he's probably hot on it. Ghita's damn good. Set up an easy fight and a retreating enemy all the way down the bridge street and out the north gate and the east—
While he retakes Lungan from a sweep up this street and back to our lighter forces at the bridge, take them out, and get across to hold south while the Cheng'di garrison and Anogi come in to catch us three-sided—
Not damn bad, old fox. But you're discounting the people's tolerance for you.
Or gambling foreign threats will make you the lesser of evils.
And that the Emperor will be your safety with the priests and the north.
Horsemen rode close to the hedge, the crowding becoming that thick in the yard. Concealing what they do have in here, in the case an attack does come.
Keeping as many men as they can off the street while they get the gold loaded and the records—I'll bet there are records Ghita doesn't let out of his sight—names and lists, blackmail material—or work for his assassins. He wouldn't separate himself from those. He's too good and too careful.
Reidi, for gods' sake, scout it out before you come in.
He stood up. He walked out, a shadow afoot, he trusted, among the shadows of horses and riders, just one more soldier wandering around, possibly one of the first-arrived out designated to keep the perimeters. He slapped a soldier's horse on the rump to let it know he was there, walked past it and on down the slope.
If Reidi came down that street now he would see a comparatively small cavalry force holding the street outside. He might mistake it for the Regent's forces, drawn up to defend the headquarters . . . chase it past the gate and then discover himself attacked from the rear and the front.
No damn time to wait. Reidi was due, any time now, depending on how fast he had been able to muster a force and pass necessary orders to other companies.
Right into a trap.
He walked the high part of the slope, trying for a clear view over the backs of the horses, worse now that men were mounting up. No sight of Ghita or Beijun, which might mean that they were not—
But there was a wagon near the terrace at the main house doors. A good sturdy wagon and a double yoke of horses. That was where something had to come—the records, the gold, and likely not far off, the officers and the staff who had to make sure that wagon stayed safe. The elite guard, the Imperials, or the native Angen troops would be watching that, damn sure no random lot of mercenaries who might take it into their heads, considering all that had gone wrong, to pay themselves all at once and the hell with the commander and Chiyaden.