"Only if you win – in which case, I'll be just as safe with you. If you don't…" A little of the bravado went out of Estrada as she finished, "You know fear of you was the only thing that kept him away from me, Lunto."
"Marina…"
"Anyway, Castilio might listen to me. There could be a chance of avoiding bloodshed."
"There'll be no avoiding bloodshed."
"In which case, you
know
I can handle myself. You came here to protect me and you helped free my home. Now I'll do the same for you. Damn it, I'm not waiting like some hand-wringing soldier's wife. If it all goes wrong, if you're hurt…" Estrada clutched his one hand in hers, gripped it tight. "I want to be there."
Alvantes stared at their locked hands for the longest time, as though he were the only witness to some unimaginable prodigy. Then, as if shaking himself from a dream, he said, "Once we're inside, you do what I tell you. That's my condition."
"Agreed."
"You take no chances."
"Absolutely not, Guard-Captain."
He sighed, a sound of utter, wearied defeat. "Then thank you, Marina. It will be a pleasure to travel with you again."
Maybe the man was learning after all.
Over the next four days, we retraced the route through the Castoval we'd taken so recently – and what seemed a lifetime ago. In one great, snaking column, we trekked down the mountainside road to the valley floor, swung west into Paen Acha, forded the river at Casta Canto – a slow and immensely tiresome process with a hundred giants in tow – and continued through the further depths of the forest towards the main southward highway.
All the while, Alvantes, Estrada and I discussed our strategy, with occasional, brief contributions from Saltlick.
In private, I'd already raised with him the possibility of the giants aiding us one last time. "Saltlick, what they did back there. Do you think you could persuade your people to help Altapasaeda the same way?"
"No fight," he said. "No hurt."
"Let's take that as a given. But if there was some way you could help without causing any harm… without putting yourselves in real risk?"
I was being disingenuous, and surely we both knew it. The giants had
already
been in real risk. The morning after the decapitation of Lupa's headquarters, I'd discovered that half a dozen of them had suffered wounds enough to fell a man twice over. They'd all shown Saltlick's remarkable capacity for healing, and a couple of days later the signs of damage were more or less gone. However, Altapasaeda wasn't Muena Palaiya. Where Lupa had had a few ignorant toughs, Mounteban had an army.
So what I was really asking was,
Will you lead the giants into a battle where they can't fight back, but where their enemies will kill you all given the slightest chance?
Saltlick had understood without me needing to spell it out, though; I knew him well enough to realise that much. He'd taken so long to answer that I'd even thought he might say no.
He hadn't, of course.
That only left the question of what possible help a battalion of pacifist giants could be against the most secure and heavily defended city this side of Pasaeda – another flaw in a plan that, even as we drew close to Altapasaeda, seemed to consist of little else. What hope did we have, when our greatest weapon was no weapon at all?
On the fourth day, we broke free of Paen Acha, stepping from tree-lined gloom into bright sunlight reflected through endless-seeming seas of golden corn. There, barely visible in the distance, were the walls of Altapasaeda. They looked small at such a distance, fragile even, especially compared to the monolithic creatures marching behind me.
Nevertheless, those fortifications were ten times sturdier than those of Muena Palaiya. They'd been built by paranoid northerners to withstand siege from an entire revolting population. Alvantes had stated with absolute certainty that not even the giants could smash those defences, nor were they tall enough to climb over. Even if we could somehow lay our hands on a job lot of giant-sized hammers, the giants would be cut down from the walls before they could make a breach. Perhaps they could shrug off a few arrows, but not the volleys that would be laid down by the forces under Mounteban's command.
Yet seeing the walls like that – so distant, so frail – none of it seemed to matter. I couldn't bring myself to believe that any one of the giants couldn't snap that faraway thread of stone in two.
"That's it," I muttered, more to myself than Alvantes riding beside me.
He started. "What is?"
"We've been tying ourselves in knots about what the giants can or can't do. But it doesn't matter. All that matters is what Mounteban
thinks
they can do."
"They can't bluff their way into Altapasaeda, Damasco."
"Maybe they don't need to."
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I, just yet. Give me time, though."
We rode on – and deep in the workings of my brain, pieces began to click into place. The giants. Alvantes's guardsmen. Mounteban. Wasn't it just like a burglary? I'd never been much of a thief, but I'd gotten by, because nine times in ten it wasn't
about
being a good thief. If you could find weaknesses, work out how to exploit them, then the rest took care of itself. Everyone, everything had a weakness – and I thought I was beginning to see Mounteban's.
By the time we drew close to the Suburbs, only one problem still eluded me. But it was the problem that all else hung upon.
We'd already agreed we wouldn't try to disguise the giants. Thanks to Lupa, Mounteban knew they were coming. In the short term at least, the fear their presence would generate in his ranks outweighed the risk of his trying to move against us. Still, marching them into the filthy streets of the Suburbs would have been a melodramatic, not to mention muddy, business. Instead, we left them camped on the outskirts while we continued on to seek out Navare.
We made no attempt to hide our own presence either. In fact, at Alvantes's suggestion, we rode by the most conspicuous route, even going so far as to risk the main road that ran against the edge of the city. Let Mounteban know we were here. Let him waste energy worrying over what to do about us, even as we plotted our move against him.
At least, that was the theory. In fact, my eyes stayed nervously locked upon the battlements above. Every slight noise threatened to send me tumbling from my horse. I started every time a helmeted head peeked through the crenulations.
Yet if I hadn't been staring at that impenetrable sheet of stone, I'd never have seen it. Not believing, I blinked hard, looked again, even rubbed a knuckle against my eyes.
It was still there. My missing piece.
Now I knew how a handful of guardsmen and an army of peace-loving giants could force their way into a fortified city, and how they might stand the tiniest of chances against its legion of defenders and its tyrant of a ruler.
There was only one drawback.
It meant I was breaking into Altapasaeda again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Before we hurled ourselves into untold danger, it was vital we knew what had been happening in Altapasaeda these last few days.
That meant a visit to Navare, and
that
meant giving away Alvantes's one and only agent in the Suburbs. I could almost feel the resistance radiating off him as he hammered the reinforced door of Navare's shack.
The resulting pause gave us ample time to imagine the worst. Then the door opened the barest crack – just enough to reveal Navare's crossbow, and the man himself just visible in the gloom behind.
"
Alvantes?
"
"Sub-Captain Navare."
"I'd thought… there were rumours, and…" Abruptly, Navare's face split into a grin. "Well, what are you standing outside for, Guard-Captain?" In a hiss, he added, "
You know they're watching, right?
"
"
Of course
," Alvantes whispered back as we brushed past.
Inside, Alvantes briefly summarised the events of the last few days, avoiding most of our time in Ans Pasaeda and touching only lightly on our run-in with Guiso Lupa. His impatience for news was palpable, and I could see Navare recognised it too.
"Our men haven't been discovered," Navare said, "though there've been a couple of close calls, all right. Three times now, Mounteban's sent men to check the barracks. Fortunately, they had scouts out, and got hidden in time. He's also had his thugs hunting through the Suburbs. He calls them 'inspections'."
"But they haven't found anyone," Alvantes said – more to himself than as a question.
"No. Well, not until now, anyway."
Alvantes let the implied criticism slide. "What about the situation inside the city? No one's tried to move against Mounteban?"
"He has things locked down tight," Navare replied. "He's lost ground in a few areas – some of the families, the ones who rely most on trade, are furious the gates are still closed. I think it's thrown his nerve, knowing we're out here, but not knowing where. On everything else, though, word is the families are toeing his line. Mounteban's been making all the right promises… and he's kept a fair few of them too."
"How can he, with the city still shut off?" inserted Estrada.
"Well, there's the thing," said Navare. "Lupa wasn't alone. Mounteban's been sending agents out to all the towns and the larger villages. Most times it's one of his lackeys, but a couple of the families have gone over wholeheartedly to his cause now. I heard a rumour Lord Eldunzi's set himself up in Muena Delorca."
"Eldunzi?" I laughed. "He couldn't run a free water stand in a drought."
Alvantes looked at me with surprise. "You know Eldunzi?"
I realised I never had told the full story of my adventures in Altapasaeda. "We passed a little time together," I said. "It didn't end well. The man has a big mouth."
"That's one of the kinder things the Muena Delorcans have been saying," agreed Navare.
"Whatever Mounteban might have set up elsewhere," put in Alvantes, "the problem stays the same. Chop off the head and kill the body. None of this will hold together with him gone."
"You have an idea?" The hope in Navare's voice betrayed the strain he'd waited under these last days.
"Not me," Alvantes said. "Damasco thinks he can get us inside."
I flushed – partly with modesty, more with a thrill of horror at the thought of what I'd somehow got myself into. "Getting in will be the easy part," I said.
I realised Navare was staring at me expectantly. The heat in my cheeks deepened. Planning was one thing, taking part another, but being pushed into the role of leader was more than I'd ever bargained for.
Then again… it was my plan.
"All right," I said, "here's how we begin."
Time was crucial. Darkness was one of the few things on our side, and we'd likely only have a single night before Mounteban concocted a scheme against the giants or shored up his defences.
Navare set out minutes later to summon our forces waiting at the barracks. We would need them in the morning, and a little extra manpower wouldn't hurt in the meantime. Soon after he'd left, Estrada announced her intention to speak with Saltlick and the giants.
"You should get some rest, Easie," she told me.
The idea seemed preposterous. Then again, there was nothing I could do for the next few hours. I sat at the end of Navare's narrow cot bed and closed my eyes.
The next I knew, I was waking to the sound of pounding upon the door. I watched Alvantes cross to it, listen carefully and then draw it wide. Outside, Navare stood flanked by half a dozen figures in hooded travel cloaks. I vaguely recognised them from amongst the Altapasaedan guardsmen; as they strode inside, I caught flashes of the uniforms they wore beneath their cloaks. Tonight they'd be acting in their official capacity for the first time in weeks, and I suspected that fact meant a lot to them.
A few minutes later, the door nearly shivered off its hinges, with a crack like muffled thunder. My first thought was a battering ram; when the blow wasn't repeated, I realised the truth. Someone else was knocking, and only one person I knew could knock like that.
Alvantes opened the door to reveal Saltlick squatted on his haunches, with Estrada stood beside him.
"Ready," Saltlick rumbled, as if concluding a conversation started long since.
Alvantes's only reply was a nod to his men. Together, they trooped into the night, Saltlick falling in behind.
Estrada slipped inside and drew a chair from the room's small table. We sat in tense silence – until the first sounds of banging and clattering began a few minutes later.
"It's started," she said.
I nodded. "No going back now," I added – and wondered how true that was.
For my plan to work, it was vital Mounteban know the giants were coming. For all that there were similarities, invading Altapasaeda wasn't a sly housebreaking in the depths of the night. The last thing it required was discretion. Only when I'd fully accepted those facts had the last details swum into focus.
To anyone watching, the events taking place in the streets of the Suburbs over those next few hours would have looked much like the preparations for a war – a war of giant proportions. Estrada and I sat listening, far past the hope of sleep. I had a fair conception of what was going on outside. It had been my idea, after all. Still, just listening to the jarring shocks of noise from all around gouged at my nerves.
I remembered my first sight of Saltlick, hunched in shadow, a monstrous living sculpture carved from the fire-lit darkness. I remembered how I'd watched the giants fight at Moaradrid's behest, their colossal forms indistinct amidst the rain and the half-light of sunrise. Unless his agents were blind and deaf, Mounteban knew the giants were coming. I thought about how on edge he must be by now, desperately struggling to keep control over frightened minions – and I couldn't but smile.