Michel thought about Dristan and the stables, wondering if the kid had already left on his trip. That had been a risk back when he thought he could slip away quietly. Now that this had all happened – well, Michel wasn’t entirely sure he could get out of Landfall without killing a thousand people on the way. “That’s easier said than done.”
“That’s your next task,” Ichtracia said with finality. “Get us out, and then take me to my sister.”
Chapter 68
The ocean swelled and crashed, smashing against the breakers at the base of the Starlight citadel with a rage driven by the approaching storm. Styke paused to wipe the water from his eyes, only for the swell to slam into him once again, pummeling him against the rocks. He bent beneath the onslaught, his fingers gripping the icy stone, and forced himself to leap the next boulder and proceed over the breakers.
Somewhere above, the report of the cannons mixed with the thunder of the surf until they were one cacophony in his ears. He turned, waiting, grasping Ibana by the wrist and helping her over the stones, shoving her on ahead of him. He tried to see through the rising swell, counting the lancers still clinging to the rocks, and witnessed a wave hit Ferlisia in the back, slamming her into the rocks. When the wave receded, she was nowhere to be seen.
“Come on!” he bellowed, though he knew they could not hear him. “Keep moving!” He reached back and grabbed Ka-poel, lifting her bodily and shoving her along after Ibana before following himself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the rising swell and snatched Ka-poel by the shoulder, pulling her beneath him, then braced his knees and arms against the rock as the wave hit.
The impact was a sensation like he had never felt, like being unhorsed in the midst of battle, then having the horse rear and fall directly on him – yet somehow worse. The force of the ocean shoved him, swallowed him, then threatened to pull him out to sea. His muscles flexed beneath the onslaught, his skin feeling as if it might burst, until the swell was gone. He shook his head and lifted Ka-poel, pushing her along before the next wave.
As quickly as he’d entered the vicious breakers, he was suddenly out of them again, climbing up on a stone shelf and turning to help the rest of the lancers as they emerged one by one, soaked and freezing, from the pitlike swell. Half of them had lost their carbines. A few had even lost their belts and swords. Little Gamble’s arm was broken, and Jackal helped him to safety and set the bone.
Styke climbed along the ledge until he reached the sea gate. It was a heavy, iron-bar door like one might find in a dungeon. It was secured by chains thick enough to deter anyone lacking a smith’s hammer.
“Belts!” Ibana ordered.
They tied the soaking belts together, then wrapped them around the iron bars closest to the rusted, salt-wrecked hinges. Styke stood at the front, flexed his forearms, and set his feet, passing the belt along the group.
“Heave!” Ibana shouted.
The hinges cracked.
“Heave!”
The door shuddered and pulled away from the stone, clattering off the ledge and down into the sea, nearly taking Styke with it before he pulled his knife and cut the belt beneath his hands. The knotted belts were untied and passed back, and the group quickly filed inside.
The corridor was dark and wet, cut out of the very rock upon which the citadel rested. Someone pressed a torch into Styke’s hands. He removed the wax cloth from the end, and Ibana struck the match and lit it. Several more torches were passed along, and soon the corridor was illuminated in a flickering light. Styke pressed his palm to the stone, feeling the shudder caused by the firing of the guns. Somewhere above him, he heard a distant scream. He began to run.
The corridor was not long, and they soon emerged into a wider room – a pit at the bottom of a long, circular staircase, the base of which was littered with empty barrels, frayed ropes, shattered masonry, and corpses.
The corpses were not old, and the smell of them reached Styke’s nostrils as he lowered his torch to let the light play upon their faces. They were two days dead, maybe less, and they wore the yellow jackets and pinned lapels of high-ranking Fatrastan officers. Styke only paused for a moment, a curse upon his lips. These were the missing brigadiers of the Third Army. They had died with knives to the backs and slit throats, and Dvory was not among them.
“Up!” Styke urged.
The circular staircase ended in a flat, stone ceiling, with the steps disappearing into a wooden trapdoor. Styke reached it first, pushing on the door. First tentatively, then harder, he pressed against it with his palms, attempting to lift it above him.
Ibana squeezed up beside him on the staircase and pushed. The door rattled some, but did not give. “It’s barred,” she told him.
“Willen could have damned well mentioned this,” Styke growled. He shoved himself between the door and the top few steps, bending his neck and placing his shoulders against the wood. Taking a deep breath, he attempted to stand, shoving upward like a man lifting a sack of grain on his back.
The door held. He heard a creak, then a groan, and he continued to push until he could bear it no longer. He relaxed, taking a deep breath.
“We’re going to have to go back out and scale the damned wall,” Ibana said. “Lindet’s going to have to damn well wait.”
“Look for something down there to use as a battering ram.”
“The angle isn’t going to work for a ram,” Ibana snorted. “This was made to withstand a siege. You’re not going to break it.”
Styke reset his shoulders and braced his hands and knees. He took a deep breath and pushed upward again. He strained, grunted, shoving until every muscle trembled beneath the strain.
“Ben, you’re going to damn well hurt yourself.”
Styke heard another scream far above him – a scream of pain, no doubt from a soldier wounded by a sharpshooter. In his mind’s eye, though, it belonged to Lindet. He thought of all the years he’d spent in the labor camps, and he discarded them for the memory of a little girl tucking candies beneath his tongue when he was helpless, and he continued to push.
He felt something pop, a terrible pain spreading across his chest. He shoved harder, tears running down his face.
“Ben!” Ibana warned, but the voice seemed far away.
Something touched his bare skin. It was a hand, small and delicate, snaking beneath his shirt and tracing a trail with its fingernails up his spine until it was just below where his shoulders met the wood of the trapdoor. Through his foggy vision, he saw Ka-poel’s face just beneath his left arm, her eyes once again young and mischievous. “What …?” he gasped.
The fingers tensed, nails biting into his skin. He felt a surge of strength, the smell of coppery sorcery filling his nostrils. His muscles bent and flexed, bones threatening to snap from the strain, and then a sudden crack and the release of tension as he surged upward. His momentum took him up and through the trapdoor, where he took several steps and collapsed on the cool stone floor of what appeared to be a large pantry full of beer kegs and sacks of grain.
He lay there, hand on his chest, as the Mad Lancers swarmed up the stairs to fill the pantry. His head pounded, his muscles on fire, and he heard Ibana distantly as she snapped orders. “Jackal, take these eight and open the front gates. If you survive that, head up and clear the towers. You four, see what you can do about the docks. The rest of you are with me and Ben.”
Styke rolled over onto his back and gasped. Ka-poel crouched above him, her head tilted quizzically.
“That really hurt,” he told her between breaths.