Authors: Alice Borchardt
A second later I was aware that another winged disc spun toward me. I leaped to my left and the rising sword sent the disc up high over the falls behind me. I didn’t dare hold my ground. The returning weapon might slice its way through my body.
As I darted past him, I saw the first disc was in his hand again, and then spinning toward my face. Again the sword seemed to parry automatically, but this time the disc slammed into the crowds on the other side of the river. Again the cries of terror and pain rang out. I knew if I fought a purely defensive battle, I was doomed.
For a few seconds, my adversary was disarmed. I drove forward and, going to one knee, drove a surprise thrust at a chink in his armor where a leg protector ended and his body armor began. At the same time, I tried to channel my fire from my hand through the blade and into his body. I didn’t know if I could do this, but I thought it worth a try. I knew I had succeeded when he screamed and I smelled roasting flesh and saw dark, red blood begin dripping on the white stone at his feet.
But at that very moment, the first winged disc thudded into the gauntlet on his right hand. An instant later, it was flying toward my face. I had a second to know I was going to die. Then my unseen companion simply knocked me down on my face. The elbow of my sword arm cracked against the stone platform and I was almost paralyzed by pain.
“Help me!” I screamed at my companion. “Help me! The pain!”
It vanished and I was levitated to my feet. Again time seemed to slow. I saw and heard the whistling disc and watched as his right hand rose to catch the blood-spattered thing.
He was to one side of me; I was almost behind him. Again I dove for another chink, this one behind the knee, a lovely place to go—for me, not him. The two big tendons that swing the lower leg are there, and the artery that supplies the foot and leg runs close to the surface.
He roared with pain, but he was fast, so fast. He pivoted, disc in his right hand, the left outstretched to catch the other.
Something screamed. It raged across my brain like a brushfire sweeping across a drought-stricken field. Pain slashed like a whip across my shoulders. Something warm and sticky was pouring down my back. I wondered if I was killed. I thought the second disc had sliced into my spine.
But no! I saw it curve in and be caught in the death-head warrior’s left hand.
“Down! Down!” my companion screamed, and I knew why. There was no way I could parry both discs with one sword if they were loosed simultaneously.
Salmon leap. I rolled toward his feet. He leaped, trying to clear my body. But I had weakened one leg and his steel-shod toes caught in the golden mail. Hooks sprang out of it and pulled him down. As he fell, both discs left his hands, both swinging in an arc into the crowds on both riverbanks and any platforms that happened to be in the way. Wherever they struck, they decimated the crowds in front of them.
I felt as though I were riding a sound wave. Cries of pain, fury, sheer, blind rage thundered from both sides of the river. People near the river fled in all directions, trying to escape the savagery of those flying weapons.
A second later leaves, twigs, and small branches were pattering down around me. On the last pass before this one, a disc must have struck the tree. I reacted instinctively. I played hurt as he leaped to his feet. I rolled away, hoping to draw him after me. He crouched and stretched out both hands but the horrible execution the discs were doing among the crowd slowed them. As had the plants that bore the mariglobes at the roadside, the tree’s sap was as I had hoped: venomous. It was bright red, the color of the foam that pours from a lung wound.
Plop! A clot of it landed in front of him. He glanced up, arms swung out wide to seize his weapons when they returned. The second red dribbling mass landed on his face.
I think the silver death mask protected him for a moment, but I doubt it was a good moment, because wherever the venom from the tree touched his skin, it seared him to the bone. His eyes sank in and became red hollows. The smiling grin, the ruthless bared-teeth grin behind the silver teeth, became a wet, scarlet hole. Then he went over backward and fell with a crash to the stones.
The two silver discs came slashing back. Whatever in his consciousness had controlled them seemed to be gone, because the first took his right hand off and then the second, his left. He was still alive then, because his stumps spurted blood. It jetted out in time to the last stuttering beats of his heart.
Then I realized that I and everyone else in the great hall was in danger, because those razor-edged discs were loose and they could no longer be controlled or aimed. There simply wasn’t time for me to snatch up the gloves and pull them on. And even then, I didn’t know if I could control the discs. Most of the humans they had brutalized on the first pass were dead or out of the way. The return was very fast. I got my sword in a two-handed grip.
Again it seemed to leap toward the disc of its own volition. The blade rang as the disc sheered off and down. A fountain of sparks leaped up as it sliced into the stone itself. The sword in my hand rose to catch the second disc and sent it in a wide arc, thankfully over the heads of the crowd. I caught it backhanded and sent it down again. An almost blinding shower of sparks rose. Many were hot enough and close enough to sting my legs and feet.
It took a second for my trembling body to realize it was over. I glanced up and saw the night ended and the stars fading. The midnight black above was gone and a blue cast was spreading.
“Dawn,” I whispered. “Thank God! Dawn!”
Suddenly Albe was beside me, the big Fir Blog just behind, the one named Goric. My sword came up.
“No,” Albe said. “He’s a friend.” She caught my wrist.
“Yes,” he said. “Right now my masters are preoccupied.”
I glanced around and saw fighting had broken out everywhere. The great families on their platforms were besieged. The long ramps leading out to them were filled with masses of struggling bodies. The gangs and the ordinary citizens seemed to have joined forces to take on the powerful. A few of the guilds were under attack, but for the most part, unless they were very rich, they were being left alone. Upstream the most dangerous-looking of the night gang men were jumping into the water and allowing it to sweep them downstream to the platforms occupied by the great families where they could attack from the rear.
“It’s broken,” Goric said. He looked up at the shattered branches still dripping what looked only too much like blood. “The great families broke it inadvertently perhaps, but until it heals itself, it will not think of us.”
Suddenly his body spasmed. He looked toward the shore. “I’m being warned.” Then he gave a cry of pain.
My hand shot out and my fingers touched the chain. I felt it also, much the same sort of pain Igrane had lashed me with when she tried to force me to sign the marriage contract with Arthur. It jolted me. But then in an instant it was gone, vanished, as the chain dropped away from his neck.
He stared at me in stunned surprise, then his expression changed into something beautiful, an astonished joy.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Albe said.
“I didn’t know I could either,” I said, staring down at my right hand.
Tuau screeched. It made us all jump. “What are you three jawing about? Run! Your platform is disappearing.”
It was. The tall hexagonal stones were being pulled down row by row into the river. We fled out across the stepping-stones. The other three hung back and forced me to take the lead. I did.
When we reached the diviners platform, we found it empty, abandoned. The ladies ran, Albe told me, when the fight ended. Ilona didn’t want to go, but she had to think first of Cateyrin.
“Follow me then,” Goric said. “I can bring you to a place of refuge.”
The streets were almost deserted, empty. Those few we did meet were much more interested in securing their own safety than trying to hinder us. When we reached the entrance to the city—we had to pass through the plaza, the entry point that opened to the lake—I was astounded again by the myriad glowing shops filled with such a staggering abundance of beautiful and valuable things. I saw this time each tower had a lighted spiral stair that led up the center so that customers could climb up and up, looking and perhaps buying as they went.
“How beautiful,” I said. “I would like to wander through here with gold in my hand. . . .”
And that’s the last thing I remember.
Oh, I have a faint impression of Albe taking my sword. I was loath to let go of it, but I did. And I recall Goric picking me up like a child. When I awakened, I found I was lying on clean straw in what looked like a rocky cavern. It reminded me of a stall where you might put an ox or a big horse. There was a wooden partition next to me, not very high, only about five feet. To my left, Albe and Goric were lying against another partition in each other’s arms. They were covered by something, a blanket or a woolen mantle, but Goric was bare to the waist. I knew without needing to lift the cloth covering them that they would be naked under it.
The sword lay by my right hand. The golden mail was simply a gown, mustard-colored, embroidered with gray at the neck, sleeves, and hem. It seemed made of a very soft deer hide.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Here,” was the acerbic reply. “But it’s more comfortable for both you and me if I soften things while we both sleep.”
“You sleep?”
“What I do is enough like sleep so that I resent being disturbed for no reason.”
“Snappish,” I said.
“Tired,” was the answer.
I didn’t think I would hear from it for some time. I sat up and looked into a woman’s face. She was crawling around the partition. I could tell she was Fir Blog. Her hair was magnificent, long and black, but she’d obviously been beaten. She had a black eye and a swollen lip. She wore the usual green tunic. It was dirty and where I could see her skin, it was covered with weals. She had a chain around her neck.
She gazed at me silently for a long moment, then asked, “Can you do for me what you did for him?”
“I don’t know.” I was uncertain. The sword had been in my hand when I touched Goric’s neck.
I reached toward her. She shied like a nervous horse. I could see why. The bruises on her body were evidence enough of her situation.
I said, “I can’t tell unless I touch it.”
She leaned forward, extending her head to me, but with her face turned away. I saw the lice crawling in her hair.
“They keep us chained up,” she said. “We are not allowed to bathe.”
I stretched out my hand, praying to God:
I hope I can help this one.
My hand touched the chain. This time there was no pain; it simply fell away. She remained where she was, looking down at it, her face averted. Then I saw that she was weeping silently, open-eyed.
I touched the bruised eye with my left hand. The smell of roses filled the narrow stall. My eyes closed, and I felt Mother’s cold nose touch mine. But when I opened my eyes, she was gone.
I said, “Mother,” and felt a warm paw in my hand. Nothing I could see, but I could feel it. When I glanced over at Goric, I saw he and Albe were saving their modesty with the blanket and watching the woman and me.
That’s what I spent most of the rest of the day doing: taking chains off people’s necks.
The word brought to us by the fugitives from above was that the city was in an uproar and the great families were having a difficult time gaining control. It might have been their preoccupation with their own troubles that caused them to be so slow about realizing that their Fir Blog slaves had found a way to slip their collars. It was just as well, because I was so tired that about all I could do for most of the day was sleep—in between touching Fir Blog necks, that is. Goric would wake me and I would do my duty. There was nothing onerous about it, and it made me feel refreshed.
The gown was morose. It said, “I hope these savages don’t chop the human inhabitants of the city into stew meat.”
I remembered the sad, bruised, frightened woman I had seen that morning and answered, “It would serve some of them right if they did.”
She told me I was a difficult sentient being. I said I thought I was just being bitchy. The gown’s consciousness went off in a huff.
Tuau showed up in time for lunch. Like all cats, he has a great sense of timing. Somehow, no matter how preoccupied, cats manage to be punctual about food. While he dined, Tuau filled us in. No, the great families had not realized they were losing their Fir Blog servants. But someone had seen Goric go off with Albe and me, and there was talk of a raid on the slave quarters to “rescue” us.
Albe laughed and cut her eyes at Goric. He smiled—actually it was more of a satisfied smirk. They both had that relaxed, satisfied look young lovers have. Old lovers, too, for that matter have much the same look. I envied them for a moment, wondering if I would one day have the same experience they were enjoying.
Tuau went on to say Ilona—no fool she—had given him a joint of meat to take to his Aunt Louise. Thus bribed, she promised to warn us about any raid the great families might be planning.
Goric surprised me by his questions. “How good is her intelligence?” he asked.
“Mummm,” Tuau said. “Pretty good. You know they give banquets for one another. Usually every family is represented at them. More than death by fire, they dread one family plotting treacherously against the others.”
“Odd,” Albe said. “I would think that would take up most of their time.”
Goric laughed, and he and Albe exchanged a glance of perfect understanding. At that moment I knew they could rule this place, and I had no right to take her away from him.
Tuau went on to say that Aunt Louise was usually invited by one of the families to lounge around and look fierce. And since the ruling heads of the families had no high opinion of the cat’s mind, she saw and heard everything; the proverbial fly on the wall.
“A useful acquaintance,” Goric said.
Tuau purred. “Then I think we might come to an . . .”
“Leaving my service,” I said gently.