Path of Revenge (37 page)

Madness,
one part of his mind cried, but the fear was drowned in twenty years of exaltation. He brought to bear every scrap of knowledge, every remembered trick, and all of his physical presence. High cut to the right, a stab-and-twist, then a flurry of defence as three swords drove at him. Two blows he parried; the third found a way through and sliced a flap of skin from his forearm.

The blow drew something up from where it lurked, buried deep within him. He screamed with rage, then began to beat at the dumbfounded Neherians with his blade, in precisely the fashion they had mocked him about. But they had no inkling of his strength, and the years of guilt that stiffened his arm.

Blow after blow, a dervish dance of carnage, careless of his own defence. A blade, lifted in a futile attempt to block the madman’s blows, was driven down into its owner’s helm. The fisherman’s next stroke took the helm and the head inside from the man’s shoulders. One man tried to crawl away; Noetos kicked out at him, his boot taking the man in the ribs with a loud crunch. He felt a prick in his right shoulder, swung blindly and took the fingers from another man.

Time to run.

He spun, leaped over a body and ran for the entrance to the lane.

‘Y’ didn’t run,’ said a voice. Noetos wiped the sweat and blood from his eyes, and acknowledged the accusing glare on Gawl’s face.

‘Neither did you,’ he replied. ‘But we run now!’

‘No need,’ said the gap-toothed man. ‘Not bein’ chased.’ They ran nonetheless.

‘Then we run a little slower, but we still run. The Neherians know we’re here.’

‘Best y’ tell that to Pril and Tumar. They saw you was occupyin’ them Neherians, so they went after the villagers.’

Noetos groaned, but he had, after all, set the example. ‘The small group?’ Even as he asked, he knew what the answer would be.

‘Nope. They went to set free the wimmin’ ’n’ babes.’

‘Oh, Alkuon,’ Noetos breathed. Dead men indeed, they’d chosen to take only one part of his instructions seriously. The wrong part.

‘Come on then, Gawl. Let us go and bleed for Makyra.’

‘You’re doin’ that already, my lord. Nasty gash, that.’ The fellow managed to sound glad to be witnessing it.

Don’t look at it. Don’t give yourself an excuse.

‘Why didn’t you go with the others, Gawl?’

‘Someone had to look after you, my lord. Seein’ as you attacked when you was suppos’t to run.’

There was logic buried somewhere in that, Noetos guessed, but he was too tired to look for it. ‘Lead on, Gawl,’ he said, and settled into a steady run.

Bregor awoke to double vision and stabbing pains in his forehead. A youngish woman in a low-cut black
dress bent over him, mopping his brow. He felt too ill to react with either surprise or anger, though he knew he ought to be angry that this woman had hit him and surprised that she now tended his wounds. Instead he felt a mild curiosity that she should be attired as though going to a ball.

‘I’m not going to ask if you are all right,’ she said, her voice a staccato salvo of words. ‘Clearly you are not. Now, how many fingers am I holding up?’

Bregor tried to see her hand, or hands. ‘Some,’ he said eventually.

‘That is not a good sign. Oh dear, I hit you too hard, and I ought not to have hit you at all. You are a Palestran, are you not?’

‘I am. The Hegeoman of Fossa village, actually.’

‘Oh! I have a sister there—never mind that. I thought you were one of those Neherians and you had one of ours captive. It wasn’t until after I freed him that I realised my mistake. He laughed at me. I thought he would make me his prisoner, but he left.’

‘Something more urgent to do, m’lady. Like warn the Neherians that a mission had arrived to attempt a rescue.’

The woman swore, a vile oath Bregor had heard only on the lips of Cadere Row men, and that only when they didn’t think he was listening. ‘I have made a mess, haven’t I.’

‘How long since he made off?’

‘No more than a few minutes, sir. Time enough to warn the others. If you have superior numbers, perhaps it will not matter,’ she ended hopefully.

‘How many Neherians are down on the beach?’ Bregor asked, trying to stand.

She put out a pale-skinned arm to support him. ‘At least fifty, perhaps more. Though some have gone back to their ship with the first of the longboats.’

Bregor took a deep, settling breath. He really did feel unwell, but there had to be something he could do to retrieve the situation. ‘No, we most definitely do not have superior numbers,’ he said. ‘Did any of your leaders escape?’

‘Only one,’ the woman said, with a peculiar emphasis on the latter word.

‘Where is he? Take me to him!’ He took a closer look at her: his right eye was still fuzzy, lending her a strangely incomplete image, but she had stiffened at his words, her face a mask. He thought carefully about what he had said.

‘Or her.’ He closed his eyes and cursed his slowness of mind. ‘Don’t bother; I deduce she is not far away.’

‘Permit me to introduce myself,’ she said, and sat down beside him. ‘I am Consina, the Hegeoma of Makyra Bay. A number of my friends are in deep trouble because I have eluded the Neherians. They do not want anyone escaping their net; if I were to warn the villages north of here, their raid would be at an end. Their anxiety to have me in their custody might soon cost my friends their lives. When I came across you I thought you might be a bargaining piece. I struck you before I thought. I apologise.’

‘It’s all right. Well, that is, it isn’t, but…’ His words tailed off and a horrible thought entered his mind.

‘Did they offer you bribes to betray your village?’ he asked before he could rein in his words.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Of course not! This was a complete surprise, otherwise…Bribes? They offered you bribes? You
knew
this was coming?’

‘Ah, it can all be explained,’ he said hastily, his words now coming as fast as hers, despite his sore throat. ‘But not now. I don’t like the idea of the Neherians killing people. That’s what they did at Kymos; we saw them burn the village leaders alive.’ Again he snapped his mouth shut, far too late.

She moaned, and tears leaked from her eyes. ‘I knew it,’ she said, her voice aquiver. ‘They took us by surprise, gathered us all on the beach and divided us into two groups, leaders and the rest. I knocked down a guard and ran, hoping others would follow. When I looked back two guards were in pursuit, but none of my people had tried to escape. They didn’t catch me; I’m the fastest in the village, man or woman. I thought the division into two groups spoke of something sinister.’

He patted her on the arm, glad he had diverted her attention from his inadvertent confession. ‘I feel well enough to take a look at the beach. There might yet be something we can do.’

He stood, then pulled her to her feet, and they began to pick their way down the narrow valley towards the village.

‘What happened at Fossa? Were the leaders killed there also? How did you escape? What did they do with the other villagers?’ Her questions tumbled over one another like anxious kittens at meal time.

‘Later, later. The Neherians place the villagers in longboats and paddle them out to the ships waiting in the bay. Noetos, our leader, thinks they might be taken south for slaves.’

‘Oh, oh, the children! This cannot be allowed to happen!’ She tugged on his arm, urging him to walk faster.

His head hurt, he felt the beginnings of nausea, but also an odd pride that, at the least, he was not running away.

Noetos peered around the corner of the last house before the beach, then fingered the impromptu bandage on his arm. His vantage point gave him a wide view: the houses fronting the beach swept around in a semicircle, mimicking the curve of the shore. He studied the
disposition of the invaders, who had now split into three groups. Nearest were those guarding the massed group of villagers, perhaps thirty men armed with swords and pikes. Fifty paces to their left as he saw it was a smaller group, half a dozen Neherians with drawn swords pointing at two men lying face down in the sand. His two sworn men.
Not dead; they would not be guarded if they were dead.
He couldn’t even remember their names. The third group, ten or so Neherians surrounding as many villagers, stood much further away, near the far end of the row of houses.

The fisherman ran through the list of impossibilities. Attack the third group, two against ten, with one minute to overwhelm them before their reinforcements arrived. Attack the second group, two against six, rescue his sworn men, then attack the third group, four against ten. Or assault the first group, two against thirty. Even if he could guarantee there were no real swordsmen among them—which he could not—the beach offered no tactical advantages. It was not a narrow lane, where one man could dominate a space. No matter which group he and Gawl assailed, within moments they would be taking on practically the entire invading force.

When confronted by overwhelmingly superior numbers,
Cyclamere said in that dispassionate voice of his,
disengage. If you must continue the battle, withdraw and wait for the strategic moment. Look to surprise or deceive your opponent. If nothing presents itself, and no reinforcements are due, flee.

Withdraw and wait.
They could not remain in such an exposed position. Nor could they hide inside one of the houses, as they might well become trapped. Up, then. Like all dwellings on the Fisher Coast these beachfront homes had flat roofs, with parapets to shelter behind. A few words with Gawl, followed by a leg boost, saw Noetos on the roof. He pulled the miner
up after him, grunting at the pain in his arms and shoulders.

The withdrawal component completed successfully, Noetos settled down to wait. As he stretched his legs to find a comfortable position, Gawl tapped him on the shoulder and pointed—not down at the beach, but along the row of roofs to their left. There, perhaps a dozen houses away, another figure hauled himself onto a roof, then hobbled forward and ducked down behind a parapet.

‘Don’t any of you people know how to obey orders?’ Noetos growled, secretly pleased at the boy’s courage.

‘Nuh. We go by us instincts in the mine, ‘wise the smothergas or the creepin’ water gets us,’ Gawl muttered. ‘What’s that lameborn fool up to?’

The boy limped back the way he had come, then disappeared. A minute or so he re-emerged, this time on a roof further away.

‘Ah. Something is happening with the captive village leaders,’ Noetos observed. They were being herded towards the houses—towards the house upon which roof Dagla lay hidden. ‘The boy must have anticipated this.’

Two of the Neherians detached themselves from those guarding the village leaders and strode purposefully between the houses. A number of dwellings behind them were still ablaze; they approached one and, with care, each selected a burning timber from the wreckage.

‘We are out of time,’ Noetos breathed.

Shouts of rage and fear erupted from their right, jerking their attention in that direction. Something was happening near the longboats, three of which had already been loaded with human cargo. People were spilling out of the vessels, falling into the water. One of the longboats had been holed; one end beached, the other submerged in three feet of water.

The worst scenario for a commander,
murmured Cyclamere,
is when unplanned engagement occurs on multiple fronts.
As he tried to divide his attention between the three groups, Noetos wished the remembered voice would shut up.

From his elevated vantage point the fisherman watched, amazed, as two black shapes—seals?—moved slowly through the water beyond the longboats, popped their heads above the surface for a moment—people, not seals—resubmerged and headed for the second longboat. The two heads emerged again, hidden from the Neherians by the bulk of the longboat, and one began to attack the boat with something sharp. A shocked Noetos realised he recognised the face of his village Hegeoman.

Lacking the view Noetos enjoyed, it took the Neherian commander, wherever he was, some time to work out what was happening. In the noise and confusion caused by sixty or more villagers crying out in fear as boats sank beneath them, his orders were obviously lost. Noetos had been trying to identify the commanding officer since he had taken position on the roof, and had narrowed his choice down to perhaps four men, but none of them seemed to be effective in sorting out the mess.

Unplanned engagements do, however, provide an opportunity for a decisive commander to take the initiative.

‘Come on,’ Noetos whispered to Gawl. ‘Time to go by our instincts.’

The man replied with a gap-toothed grin.

They were forced to wait for an unnervingly long time—although probably no longer than sixty heartbeats—while the soldiers searching houses or otherwise engaged in the village rushed back to the beach. When the cobbled street had cleared, Gawl and Noetos scrambled down from the roof and ran swiftly towards the house on whose roof Dagla hid; the
house, if Noetos understood the situation, in which the Makyra village elders would be burned alive.

Cries of pain and anger greeted their arrival. Signalling Gawl to remain at street level, Noetos climbed an external ladder to the roof. Dagla started when Noetos appeared at his side, then offered him an enthusiastic grin.

‘Well, m’ lord,’ he said, ‘I’m makin’ my death mean somethin’ as you told us.’ So saying, he took up a stone from a pile at his feet and hurled it over the parapet. A thunk, not unlike the sound a fish made when it hit the deck, and a cry of pain. ‘I’m a good shot,’ he added unnecessarily. ‘Lotsa stones at Eisarn Pit, lotsa time to practise.’

Eyes wide, Noetos peered over the parapet. Five men already down, including both the Neherians carrying the burning timbers, which smouldered on the sand. One of the men was a villager, blood pouring from a wound to his back. From sword, not stone. Two pairs of figures struggled; the other village elders sat docilely on the ground, too old or afraid to fight or flee, though no one guarded them.

‘Noetos!’ Gawl cried, appearing at the top of the ladder. ‘’Ware!’