Gail Dayton – The Compass Rose (страница 7)

From her own, she retrieved the bag of supplies she’d been collecting—dried meat, hard cheese, biscuit, a cup, extra shoes—and knelt to peer beneath the tent wall. No one passed by. After endless hours, the cannonade was at last rising to its crescendo. The warriors would be mustering on the field before the city, preparing for the attack. No one would notice a boy slipping from the camp.

She made it past the cannon, past the endless stacks of stores, past the officers’ mounts and the cattle waiting their turn to be slaughtered for rations. She could see the line of trees that marked the southern edge of the Tibran camp.

“Here! You—boy!”

Aisse froze, hesitating seconds too long before realizing she should run. Her face would never pass for a boy’s at second glance. But the Farmer caste tending the beasts already had hold of her arm.

“What are you doing here, boy?” He yanked, snapping her arm painfully upward. “Spying? Off to tell your witches all our plans?”

She kept her face turned away, hoping her hacked-off hair would provide sufficient disguise.

“Look at me, boy!” He jerked her arm again.

Aisse shook her head, trying to pull away from him. He swore and backhanded her across the face. She couldn’t stop the reflexive high-pitched cry. A girl’s sound, not a boy’s.

The farmer grabbed her face with the hand not gripping her arm and forced it upward, until he could see her. “Achz and Arilo!” He called on the Farmer caste’s twin gods in his shock. “You’re female.”

He shook her, violently. “What in seven hells have you done? By all that’s holy…” His voice trembled with horror.

And it was true horror to a Tibran male to think anyone might wish to escape his caste, to think a woman might wish to live some other life. Women lived in the women’s quarters of whatever caste they were assigned, doing women’s work, available to any man of any caste who might wish to use her. Most Tibran women didn’t mind. It was the way life was. Aisse hated it.

She couldn’t lose her chance at freedom now, not when she was so close. “Let me go!”

Her elbow punched into the farmer’s stomach as she struggled. He grunted with the blow, so she did it again, kicking, scratching and biting in desperate silence.

“Witch.” He shook her hard enough to rattle her eyes in their sockets. The first blow of his fist stunned her and she collapsed, held upright only by his grip. He waited till she regained her senses before he hit her again, to be sure she felt every least bit of the punishment he had in store for her. He told her so.

Torchay pressed his naitan closer into the angle between wall and walkway, his body covering hers. Not that mere flesh and blood were much defense against the cannon’s iron balls, but at least if he failed her this time, he would surely die first. He put his lips next to her ear and shouted so he could be heard. “We should pull back. They’re targeting the walls now.”

“And the town.”

Since the bombardment started, she had argued against leaving the walls because the Tibran missiles sailed over their heads to crash into the shops and houses of Ukiny. Then, she had been right. They were safer on the walls. But no longer.

The captain turned her head. Torchay pulled back, allowing her to find his ear.

“It’s too late to pull back.” Her lips brushed his skin as she spoke. “Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t do it now. We’re safer staying put.”

Torchay gave up. She was likely right, as usual. And even if she wasn’t, she was the captain.

A cannonball smacked into the crenellations behind them, sending stones tumbling to the walkway. Hands molded to his captain’s head, he waited till the biggest debris settled, then lifted his head just enough to peer behind him. The other guards lay over their naitani in the space beyond his feet.

“Hamonn!” Torchay bellowed the man’s name, but doubted he could be heard over the cannon’s roar. He propped himself on elbows to see better, and thought something moved past the South naitan’s guard.

“Status?” his captain asked.

“Checking.” He nudged Hamonn with his foot. Rubble spilled from the man’s back, but the man himself did not move.

“Casualties, Sergeant?”

“Hamonn isn’t moving. Don’t think he’s dead, but I don’t know. Don’t know about Beltis either. Someone’s moving beyond them, so I assume Kadrey and his naitan are unhurt.” He didn’t like reporting incomplete information, but his captain needed something and that was the best he had.

“Go check on Hamonn. See if Beltis is hurt. I need her with me.”

Torchay flattened himself over her as another ball hit close by. “When it’s safe.”

“Go now. By the time it’s safe, the battle will be over. That’s an order, Sergeant.”

When she said that, it meant she was beyond reasoning with. He had no choice but to obey, or risk her doing almost anything. Torchay rose onto hands and knees, but remained in place, his body still shielding hers. “Do not move from this spot.”

They’d fought this battle out their first year or so together, but he still held his breath every time he went on one of her errands, until he returned and found her again where he’d left her.

“I won’t. Now go.” Her shove sent him scooting on hands and feet to the pair under the debris behind them.

Torchay moved the worst of the stones off the older man and checked for a pulse. He found it, strong and steady. “Trooper? Beltis, are you injured?” He leaned close to hear any response over the cannon fire.

“I’m fine.” Her voice came muffled from beneath her guard. “Is Hamonn—”

“Breathing and well enough, given that he has a lump the size of my fist on the back of his head.” Torchay probed the injury and was rewarded with reaction.

Hamonn tried to shove him away. He might have groaned but no one could hear it in the crash of a cannonball nearby. So close that bits of rock blasted from the wall spun into Torchay’s face, making tiny cuts on his forehead and cheeks. Too close.

He looked up to see where it had hit in time to see the parapet above his captain begin to crumble. “Kallista!”

Torchay bellowed her name and scrambled to reach her. She was moving, getting out of the way, but not fast enough.

An enormous stone capping the structure plummeted down, striking her a glancing blow before it bounced off the town side of the walk. More stones followed. Torchay dove forward to keep them off her. He didn’t quite succeed.

A fist-size stone hit her head, leaving a cut oozing blood in the fine, pale skin of her forehead. With a cry, Torchay covered her head with his hands, ignoring the battering they took. He scooted forward until he could get his head over hers. His was undoubtedly harder, could take more of a beating. But the rocks had stopped falling. The entire parapet lay on the walkway around and over them.

Torchay shoved the rocks away from her, leaving streaks of blood on their chalky surface. His hands bled from a score of cuts, and at least one finger was likely broken. He used them to cup his captain’s face and turn it up to the full moon’s light. He bent his head till his beak of a nose brushed her small straight one, and he felt her breath stir against his skin. “Blessed One,” he whispered in gratitude.

“Is she dead?” Both young naitani peered over his shoulder, but it was Beltis who spoke.

It took Torchay a few moments before he realized Beltis sounded strange because she wasn’t shouting. The bombardment had stopped. Instantly alert, Torchay looked toward the breach and saw Hamonn, slightly the worse for wear, peering around what was left of the crumbled breastworks.

“They’re coming!” he shouted.

One of Iranda’s bubbles burst into bright light high above the city wall, illuminating all that lay below. Torchay made note of it. The captain would want to know so she could commend her later for her prompt and proper action.

“They’re coming!” Hamonn beckoned with a wave of his arm, but the two naitani still hovered.

“Go.” Torchay shoved at the yellow-clad girl. Adessay would follow her lead, if she only would.

“Is she dead?” Beltis asked again.

“No, but if she were, you’d still have to take command. You’re ranking naitan. It’s your duty to protect them.” He jerked his head in the direction of the city and wished he hadn’t. He’d taken a few too many stones to the head himself. “The enemy is coming.”

He could see them over the broken wall, rushing forward in waves, hopefully to break against Ukiny’s walls like the ocean on the shore. But like the ocean, they would pour through any gap they found.

“Naitan.” Hamonn had returned from the hole in the wall to kneel in front of his charge. He held his hands out, palm up. “I accept your gloves.”

Beltis stared at him half a second, then stripped off her gloves and laid them in Hamonn’s upturned hands. “Adessay.” Her voice cracked like a whip. “Come with me, Trooper. We have an army to stop.”

CHAPTER THREE

Beltis had to pick her way through the rubble that had felled Kallista, rather than striding decisively, but she was moving. The young North naitan removed his gloves, handed them to his guard and followed, his blue tunic less noticeable in Iranda’s light than Beltis’s yellow.