The Paladin

Chapter Twenty-one

A narrow lane cut in on the street near the market, like any of a score such alleys, except its clutter of refuse and broken shutters. It went in the general direction of the camp and some of the drift of soldiers toward the summons might take that darker, winding shortcut behind the riverfront buildings. Shoka took a glance back down the street, saw that a few bands still followed them, but the traffic was thinning.

So they took that way. And there was no one behind them yet to notice, he made sure of that, when they took a lane back north again, a twisting gut of a street that cut farther south, in the long run, just about the time it got to the vicinity of the camp.

The men were doubtless impressed. Himself, he only knew the lay of the town, a memory of maps—years ago—that the streets here tended to a diagonal, that the Old Emperor in his youth had seized a row of warehouses fronting the harbor and bricked up its windows and its harborside doors, as cheaper than building a thirty-foot wall.

And any street in this quarter that did not go through, ran up against that barrier, the northern wall of the square riverside enclosure that was the market in peacetime and the gate-garrison in anxious times, and that wall was the sealed face of old warehouses and brothels.

But the tenants had moved back in again—at least the warehouses. The brothels and the taverns sought more trafficked places. The city's poor nestled in the decay of the neighborhood's whorehouses.

"There's the wall," Shoka said, nodding up toward the thirty-foot face of buff stone that sealed off the end of the street between two leaning ramshackle apartments, past a tangle of hanging laundry and illicit built-ons before it became again the back wall of those buildings.

As the hammer of drums and the sound of trumpets announced an imperial arrival on the other side, and the poor folk on this side looked with fright at a motley group of soldiers where no soldiers would tend to come, and scuttled out to grab children and get doors and shutters between themselves and trouble.

"Get that door," Shoka said, as a girl, baby in arms, ran for a door a woman held. Chun and Wengadi vaulted the porch railing and bashed the door out of the woman's hands as Shoka came up the steps.

"Please," he said, in the northern accent, and bowed with utmost politeness to the terrified woman. "We're after the loan of your upstairs. Please."

Eyes widened. The terror was still there. But there was a different look to it.

"Ye're with Saukendar. . . ." As if that was no bad thing.

"Here." Taizu closed her fist around a gold amulet she wore, part of the mercenary's gaud, and took it off over her head. "Get! You can get killed around us! Go! Get clear! Get everyone out of here!"

"Come on, dammit!" Shoka followed Chun and Wengadi up the narrow stairs, past wobbly balconies, past graffiti'ed erotic frescoes, and up and up to the topmost level, where a weak door gave on a dark little hole, someone's apartment, a stinking lot of clutter, a low ceiling with birds nesting in the rafters and a scant light coming through the roof tiles.

Damn mess. Some dirt poor grandmother made party to what could get her killed, if the soldiers came searching.

Reidi, for gods' sakes, look alive over there!

"Up," he said, and Jian and Wengadi scrambled to grab a plank that had served as a table, and braced it against the brickwork and climbed up to knock roof-tiles aside, letting a blinding light in from overhead.

Jian and Wengadi swung down from the low rafters. Then came the anxious part. "I'll do it!" Taizu said. "I don't weigh so much!"

"You don't know what you're aiming at," Shoka said. He slipped his sword, his kit and his blanket roll off, tossed the encumbrance out of the way, and with a deep breath and a rush, ran the slanted board to grab hold of the dusty rafters. From there he edged over to climb higher on the beams, and put his head out into the fading daylight, chest-level with the tiled roof.

"Those tiles are old!" Chun's voice came up to him. "Be careful!"

But he was looking out beyond the immediate prospect of the untidy camp spread out at the foot of the wall this roof sheltered—was looking beyond the camp's further, riverside wall, across the Hisei, where the bridge was, the distance-dimmed hills where Reidi ought to be... if Reidi was there at all.

And closer then, thirty feet below him, too close, with only head and shoulders above the tiles, to see the gate that let out near the bridge, or the tents up against the foot of the wall, but the further ones spread, between their mandated aisles for movement of troops and horses, in a tangle of overlapping guy-ropes and tent-edges, no neat, precise rows, but a motley city in canvas and goat-hide and whatever material and shape the mercenaries had brought with them or plundered.

Pirates and brigands, ensconced where the precise, pale tents of Imperial troops had been, for Imperial visitations; or more often, the stripes and bright colors of Lungan market, in the Empire's better, more tranquil years—a safe, enclosed bazaar where a few police and strong gates could mean an honest trade and a scarcity of cutpurses and thieves.

There was the muster of troops—a dark gathering around bright torches, lanterns, lit against the gathering night; banners; and the rostrum which Ghita would use. The procession had already passed. There were figures on the podium, small and glittering with gold.

He levered himself up gingerly, trusting his weight to old tiles and old wood.

"Damn fine view."

"Here!" Chun said from below. His bow came up, strung for him. He worked around to get his knee under him. Tile grated and slipped under his hip. He flattened and the slippage stopped.

"Captain?"

"Shut up! I'm all right." In a shaky voice, mindful of a thirty-foot drop and an enemy camp below. He eased up again, listened for the grating of tiles and carefully settled his weight on one knee, then drew a whole breath and leaned to take the two arrows that Chun passed up to him.

On his knees he could see the tents and the aisle below as well as the further quarters of the camp. Long shot. A fair amount of wind coming almost squarely at his back, a little off to his left shoulder. He took a good brace with his foot and his knee, then drew the bow, calculated his shot and arced it high into the camp. Ranging shot. He saw it drop nearly to the far wall, with wind and starting-height to help it. He did not need the second arrow,

"Come on!" he hissed at the dark opening beside him. As light flared, and a third arrow came up to him, this one with a blazing wrap about the point. Well-soaked: it fluttered and spat in the wind as he took it up and drew for a shot high and wide. Heavier point. It would drop more quickly. A trace of fire flew across the dusk, dimmer than the torches.

"Here!" Chun said.

Another arrow, and another, into the tents. As the first one blossomed into fire. In a too-tight jumble of canvas. In a good northerly breeze that would sweep fire to the far walls, and carry burning wisps of canvas swirling in the air, inside four high walls with a far distance between fires and the two water-wells.

He saw the troops scatter from the gathering, he heard the thin voices shout orders as smoke rolled up, lit from spreading fire. He kept shooting as long as arrows came up, trails of fire across the sky, till Chun clambered up to put his head through the opening and survey the spreading fire that glared off walls and off the smoke, soldiers running to save what they could of gear and personal belongings. They were mercenaries. Everything they owned was in those tents. But there were eight, nine points of fire in the camp, and two of them bracketed the gate. Horses screamed in panic. Riders fought to get them to the gate. He picked up an ordinary arrow and fired into a mass of running men below him.

"Get down, m'lord!" Chun pleaded with him.

About time, he thought. He moved to do that, and the tiles slipped, a grating slide toward the edge.

But a hand grabbed him as he slid, and hauled him down through the opening in a shower of tiles, onto a collapsing cushion of hands and bodies.

"Dammit!" Taizu yelled.

"We got him, we got him," Chun gasped, and Shoka fought his way to his knees amid the tangle, realized part of the difficulty was the bow he was still holding on to. He let it go, grabbed for a post and hauled his way to his feet. "I'm all right," he said. "Let's get out of here—" —as he grabbed his sword and his kit from under bits of tile. He reached again to get the bow, but Taizu grabbed it up, unstrung it, and wrapped that and the quiver in the mat that had concealed it, while Wengadi gathered up the flrepot and the rest of the evidence.

Down the stairs, past doors still shut; and out into the street again, down another lane.

And across the main thoroughfare, where people gathered in bewilderment, under a sky lit with fire and smoke.

People spotted them and scattered, fast.

But a rock hit Jian's shoulder.

"Damn!" Jian yelled.

"Down with the Regent!" someone shouted.

"Come on!" Shoka said as Chun started to turn around. "Get out of here!" He grabbed Chun and ran, as stones flew out of the dusk and rattled on the pavings around them.

Horsemen plunged around the corner ahead of them, soldiers coming pell mell from the riverside and the camp—

—looking for the source of the tiles and the fire, Shoka reckoned, and finding rebellion in full flower.

The street was suddenly empty back there except for rocks and bricks, the soldiers scattered in pursuit of rebels.

"We can't help them!" Shoka said. "They're on their own! Come on! Back to the Peony, get the horses!"

"Captain," the innkeeper panted, following them down into the stableyard. "I kept 'em f' you, ain't nothin' missin'—"

"Good," Shoka threw back over his shoulder. "Then you're safe. Get back inside, master innkeeper!"

"What's happenin'? What's happenin', what's burnin' uptown? Is there fightin'?"

"There will be, just lock your doors and stay out of it, man!"

Chun was hauling the tack out of the owner's kitchen-shed, and Waichen and Liang were already saddling, throwing blankets on horses stable-bound too long, stiff and fretful.

"I been friendly to the army!"

"Just shut up, innkeeper!" Shoka grabbed his own tack out of Chun's hands and turned and glared up. "Better start figuring out what side you belong to! They're crossing the bridge!"

The innkeeper shut up. The door banged. Shoka hauled the gear up to his horse and saddled with economy, no haste, no nonsense either. Taizu's horse had the stall next.

"You keep to our center," he said. "Taizu, hear me? Don't get reckless."

"I've done all right," the faint, feminine voice came back to him. "Haven't I?"

"We got a damn bunch of —" —rabble, he almost said. Old ways, old thinking. "—bunch of fools can't tell sides out there, for gods' sakes, just stay close. We're going across that bridge, we're going the smart way, we don't need any damn heroics."

His hands were sweating on the girth. He had the shin-guards on and the gauntlets and the helmet with him, they had picked that cumbersome gear up in the room upstairs, along with their other two bows and the several quivers. The owner of the Peony had that to his credit at least—no pilferage: an anxious man, a worried man—

Damn, he has a right to be, who am I to blame him?

He backed the horse out, climbed up into the saddle and walked it circles while Taizu and Wengadi and Nui got their horses saddled. "Be careful out there," he told the men. "Citizens don't know who the hell we are. Remember that. We just get out of here, cross the bridge if we can, or if you get cut off, dismount, lie low till it's over; if that doesn't look good, remember the east gate and run like hell. We've done our part. Just get out alive. Hear?"

Chun got up to the saddle. Taizu did, and Nui, while Wengadi led his over to the gate and opened it.

The smell of smoke was on the wind. The Peony's lanterns overwhelmed any glow of fire from the south.

Wengadi held the gate for the last of them and they pulled up to wait on the street while Wengadi mounted up, leaving the Peony's gate to bang against the post.

Black figures showed in the lantern-light up and down tannery row, small groups who did not stay to the walks, but who gave a group of horsemen an uncomfortably apparent attention.

"Let's get out of here," Shoka said, and sent his horse off for the corner and up the cobbled street, which was deserted beneath the light of infrequent lanterns and a ruddy sky. Dark buildings, shutters open to the night and not a light showing above. Just the lanterns that made anyone on the streets a target, and, south of tannery row, torn-up cobbles and a body lying on the pavement.

He put the group to all the speed he dared on the uneven ground. The racket of shod hooves came back at them from the walls on either side, drowning thin shouts from the distance. More horsemen came their way and cut off ahead of them, down a side-street.

Patrols. Flying squads. Deserters or looters. Gods knew. He took the chance for a look back to make sure of his own group. They were riding close, all of them, keeping with him, not down the middle of the street, but over to the side, where they at least had occasional shadow and where they made a less convenient target for half the street at least.

Two blocks to go to the esplanade and the bridge. A shadow showed on a balcony across the street. The echoes came back crazily from them and from somewhere else. More bodies on the street, paving stones and rocks littering the cobbles. One of the horses caught-step and stumbled, sending a bit of brick skittering across the arch of the street into the gutter.

Suddenly rocks were landing around them and a lamp plummeted from the balcony and shattered, oil-fire spreading around the cobbles, throwing light, shying the horses. "Come on!" he yelled, and kicked his and kept going. Something hit his back. The gelding jumped under him, lost its footing on the oil and skidded while rocks hailed around him, hitting him, hitting the horse as it scrambled for balance and skidded again.

"Dammit!" he yelled as it tried to bolt, as missiles kept coming, crashing around them. One horse was down—Eidi's. He tried to get in the saddle as it scrambled up, and just held on as the horse fled the barrage in panic.

Then more horsemen came charging in from the riverside, right into the middle of it, more horses skidding. Eidi had his horse stopped, Chun was through, with Wengadi and Jian. Taizu came out of the confusion, with Liang and Waichen. Nui, then, and Yandai, with Panji clinging to his saddle-leather and running along beside.

"Get to cover!" he yelled at Panji. "You can't go double, get to cover!"

More riders were coming, men on foot now, a tide hemming them about as the street filled with soldiers trying to tear up shutters for a barricade.

"What in hell're you doing?" Shoka yelled, reining into the middle of it.

"They're crossing the bridge!" an officer yelled back.

"You're stopping our own troops, fool! Order from headquarters! Keep this street open!"

"The hell—"

Shoka whipped the sword out and across, and the officer went staggering back, screaming.

"Get that down!" Shoka yelled, and pushed his horse into the press. "You're cutting off our own men, you damn fools, get it down!"

He was not alone now. Chun was with him, Eidi on his horse and pressing up close to lend their weight to the deliberate push into the soldiers trying to establish the barricade, with men still pouring in from the other side, knocking the panels aside, shouldering and shoving the horses, until the barricade-makers dropped their effort and let the shutters fall to be trampled, joining the retreat down the street.

Shoka kicked his horse ahead, gaining ground as he could. "Run for it!" he yelled at the retreating soldiers till his voice cracked. "East gate, go, go!"

He could not see where the others were. He looked behind him. He saw Liang. He saw Taizu still ahorse, coming through the press.

To the corner, then, into the flare of fire on riverside, the roll of smoke from burning boats, fire outlining the timbers of the bridge as riders poured off it by the hundreds.

He reined back, pulled his horse against the screens of a restaurant, wood cracking as the horse edged back. Eidi came up beside him, and Chun. Liang. He saw Waichen across the heads of rushing soldiers, saw Yandai and Nui take off across the riverfront toward the bridge.

"Where's Taizu, dammit?"

As he heard the roll of drums and saw the banners on the bridge, the red and white of Feiyan, the white and black lotus of Hoishi in the glare of fire.

"M'lord!" Chun cried, spurring off. "Stay there!"

"The hell!" He kicked his horse and shouldered past Eidi's grab at stopping him, back around the corner into the street, into the press of retreating soldiery.

No sign of her. None of Panji or Wengadi either. He had hope. Wengadi might have gone off down the side street, Taizu with him, if they had gotten pushed aside. Might just have gone with the flow that had become a rout, become a riot, horses skidding on the street, men falling to be ridden down. . . .

"My lord!" Eidi yelled, forcing his way through. "Get back, get back, for the gods' sake we can't lose you!"

He reined about and came back to the shelter of the doorway, held there while the tide rolled past and became the vanguard of Feiyan cavalry, fluttering with the red and white banners—

Gods, go to ground, girl, get somewhere and get off that horse and hide!

Gods, where is she?

"M'lord Saukendar!" Chun shouted.

Riders came up on them, lotus banners of Hoishi, lord Reidi's men—lord Reidi himself, white hair flying in the smoky wind.

"M'lord Saukendar," Reidi said, as men of his climbed out of their saddles and came around him, "we saw your signal from the hills. We rode down through Lungan south-shore with more speed than I would have thought possible—The mercenary units . . . they broke and scattered, m'lord—at the bridge, the barricades were virtually unmanned—"

He heard Reidi's voice, telling him things he would have, under other circumstances, been pleased to hear.

He would be delighted still, if a smallish rider somehow turned up around the corner. He pressed his horse forward to see.

"My lord Saukendar—"

"My wife is missing," he muttered. He pushed past the corner, past the men who interfered with him, and saw a street in which the fighting had gone far down the lanes, leaving its detritus of bodies and spent missiles in shadow and sporadic lantern-light.

"My lord." It was Chun, riding near him to offer a robe that glittered gold and silver in the dim light. "Wear this, so our men make no mistake—"

"Find her, Chun! You and Eidi, get a search up and down this street! She knows your voices."

"Take it. Please, m'lord Saukendar."

Go to cover, go to the east gate—

Hell if she would. Not if she was cut off, on her own—

Get Gitu. That's what she'd do.

But where is he?

The Hang house . . . the headquarters. The gold would be there and not the camp—and he's dead without funds. No troops, no prospects—

And Beijun, in Ghita's hands—Ghita's sole claim to legitimacy—

"M'lord, —"

"I need a handful of men. You stay here and keep looking! If you find her—" He reined around to the open, where he had his choice of Reidi's attendants, and called back: "—find me at their headquarters!"

It was more than a handful of men that went with him, black and white banners about him, safe-passage through the streets at a wild pace that racketed echoes off the walls and scattered isolated groups of rioters from their path. "It's Hoishi!" people yelled from balconies. "It's the rebels!"

And from the streets: "Down with the Regent!"

Lungan shook the beast from its back. Lungan smashed wine-shop doors and made its own kind of beast, dancing in lantern-light, in the wreckage of neighbors, chaining down rock-littered streets and arming itself with dead men's weapons.

"Drop it, drop it," someone shrieked from above, "it's the rebels!" And a rope stretched across the street fell slack in front of their horses, trampled underfoot as they went through. They turned onto the street that led from the market north. There were dead men and dead horses, arrow-shot; and Shoka took them by the alley, quickly, and drew up there.

It was Reidi's lieutenant who had come with him, at Reidi's quick insistence—Reidi's lieutenant and a squad of Reidi's guard with their unit captain to lead the way and find out the situation, for Reidi himself to follow as he got his main forces organized and came in their wake—a more practical understanding in that old gentleman how to set up a fast response than there was in all of Kegi's books. Two names from Reidi and they were off, no questions, no delay, and no confusion then or now in these men.

"It's the Lieng house," Shoka said, "any of you know it?" No, evidently. "—Outside this alley, half a block north, lane cuts off to the west to a small scullery entry, dead end alley, main street goes past the gate. I don't know what we're going to run into. If it looks good I want a chase behind me and some shots aimed close enough to look convincing. Understand? If it looks like it's too stiff going, get the hell back and get Reidi here. They can't ride out the scullery gate, the court there is only good for a hand-cart or two and there's no way they can gather there in strength enough—too much chance of getting penned up in the lane outside. It'll be the main gate and a run for the north if they try to break out. But I'll try to get that scullery gate open. Tell Reidi that. You can guide him here, with no mistakes. Can't you?"

"Yes, m'lord," the lieutenant said—Reidi's men all in their proper colors, with their individual pennons—

—and himself, in mercenary's motley.

He reined around and kicked his horse hard, startling it into motion, as far as the end of the alley and the turn onto the street before he heard the company thundering after him.

There were bonfires in the street, heaped up debris that threw a garish light onto close walls, and enough dead in the street to warn him.

So he crossed the street as Reidi's men passed him and reined in against the wall of the estate next to Lieng, deaf to the hiss of arrows in the clatter of hooves on cobblestone as Reidi's men charged the main gate down the street and then shied off again, leaving a man and two horses down—

Dammit. While he delayed—

Stiff resistance—no question. They had men enough in there, whether they were saving their own necks or defending their lord.

Low wall, a simple affair for a rich man's garden, defended from the mansion's balconies, from men set on terraces and in the high windows.

If Ghita himself was inside those walls and not well on the road to Cheng'di he had risked getting himself into a trap—the mob around him, the southern lords advancing through the city—The estate could burn, Ghita, the Emperor, everything in one bonfire—

But Ghita had powerful reasons to retreat here in the chaos—to grab the mercenaries' payroll and gather up the remaining members of his staff and the core troops of his personal guard, that trusted number which would have guarded the headquarters during his processional.

Damn right Ghita dared not desert those troops—or the money. The hand-picked commanders of the Imperials and money for the mercenaries had put him in power, money had held him there, that and Gitu's Angen officers and the elite of Gitu's hire-ons. And if they had to, if they could hold out long enough, or break free—there were the large mercenary garrisons at Anogi and at Cheng'di, garrisons that could come in on two sides of Lungan. . . .

If there were a Regent alive to rally to, and pay promised.

Shoka bit dry, stubbled lips and stared at the corner where the road cut back to the scullery access. Try the same thing twice?

Gods knew what Taizu would do.

Or whether she had come this way or could ever have gotten through the ambushes in the streets.

But damned if he could afford the chance she was in there, if it came to a siege. This was where the killing would surely be, the Emperor held hostage, if Ghita was in there, and the odds were more than even that he was—

Not that the southern lords wanted Beijun back. But there were the priests, there were the northern lords, tied by blood to the dynasty and enjoying their prerogatives, were the political repercussions against whoever caused the death of the Emperor. There was a certain war,of succession—more blood, more craziness, while the barbarian kings sent their mercenaries into the heart of Chiyaden and grew more and more necessary, with the army pinned down in border skirmishes against those kings' enemies—

The damned, self-indulgent fool . . . Help me, Shoka. . . .

He was alone on the street—just himself, the dead, and the waiting archers, of whatever side. But a new sound echoed through the streets—a distant thunder of cavalry.

Reidi? Or Meijun or Kegi, sweeping in from the east?

North. My gods. The mercenaries have cut around north, back to their headquarters—some captain worth his hire—

Or Gitu. With the gold to pay them here, at the headquarters—

He urged his horse forward, trusting to that distraction, slipped over to the shadowed side of the saddle before the corner and kept low, hoping that if anyone was looking his way, what was visible from above and from across the street was simply a riderless stray.

It got him across the street. He put his feet down and led the horse along the wall, keeping it between him and the outside, himself constantly in its shadow. He tried to remember the other side, where the terraces and the trees were.

No cart to help him over the wall this time. He stopped the horse, climbed up into the saddle and got a knee onto its back.

It moved. He tugged back on the reins, centered his weight, and got it stopped and mostly steady for the moment. Not so high a wall. Not so impossible, if the damned horse would quit edging forward on him.

Stand, dammit!

He looked up, tugged the rein again and figured on a single instant of stability.

He tucked up further in the scantly flexible armor, got his foot braced, damning the shin-guards, and reined the horse to a momentary stop again.

And thrust up on that foot and jumped from a startled, shying horse, for a belly-down landing on the top of the garden wall.

He rolled off, fast, and plummeted. Not the same distance down. He knew that the instant he had gone. Further.

Thump!

Onto a paved terrace, between two potted pines.

He lay still a moment getting his wind back and finding out if his shoulder was broken. Then he got himself up on his hands and knees and stood up quietly, taking his bearings on the house across the paved terrace, the way down to the scullery access.

There were dead men down there, like puddles of shadow.

He crept gingerly down the slope, keeping an eye to the scullery and the sheds there, and edged along the wall to reach for the gate-latch.

It was already unlatched.

The damned little bitch!