The Lady Read Online Free Page B

the hostage-takers. “Let us in to the necromancer, or the magistrate dies and her blood will be on your hands!”
    â€œI’ll let you in,” an officer called down, and there was silence. He was an old man, grey-haired, weary-faced, with two black ribbons trailing from his helmet and two wide black bands on the hem of his grey tunic. A captain. He stood in a crenel of the wall, exposing himself to any missile, a hand gripping the edge of a merlon with fingers like claws, as if he really, really did not like his perch. No one threw a stone. Yet. “You and the magistrate, no other. We’ll talk about this.”
    â€œOpen your gates!”
    â€œAnd let drunken murder loose on the folk of the city? You know I can’t do that.” The captain was trying to sound reasonable, to pretend he thought the man making the demands could be reasonable. “I don’t know anything of devils, but—”
    â€œOpen the gates! Open the gates!”
    Zavel really did not want to be in the middle of this. His stomach churned and his skin was clammy, slick with sweat. He was going to be sick, he knew it. He needed to get out of this close and reeking crowd, get some air, a drink of water, needed to sit down somewhere quiet and let this damnable headache pass.
    A couple of big Northrons had axes out and were hewing at the gate, long splinters slivering away. The crowd surged forward around a woman who’d got an improvised torch alight. They piled sticks and rags and dry dead weeds to kindle a fire. The ones about the magistrate were hurling her back and forth among them as she wailed like a baby, arms raised, clutching her head, trying to protect herself. They threw her to the ground and kicked her, took the butts of spears to her head and back as she rolled and hunched up small. The captain was gone from the crenel, and a spatter of arrows from above scattered them, left the ringleader lying dead, with others still or yelling, dragging themselves wounded. The magistrate tried to crawl but only flopped like a landed fish.
    People shoved and shrieked and the guards above kept shooting, not a battlefield rain of arrows but carefully, picking targets. Zavel fell, unsteady on his feet, retching again, but he crawled anyway. Safer to keep low amid the legs. Someone walked on his hand, someone tripped on him, someone fell and didn’t move, and he half rose and scuttled, yelling with the rest, but in his dizziness he’d gotten turned the wrong way and he tripped over the battered magistrate. She moaned, not dead, but her face was a blood-slick pulp with only one eye, which stared wide and unseeing in its terror. Zavel yelled again and rocked away. But nobody had gone looking for his mother. Too late, they said. The sand took her. He dragged the magistrate’s arm over his shoulder, shouted at her, “Up, stand up, come on!” Somehow he heaved her up, though she dangled limp, feet fumbling. An arrow stuck the ground at his feet and he looked around wildly for shelter, any shelter, a bush would do. Nothing. Shouting. Guardsmen over the gate were dumping jar after jar of water down onto the fire, which hadn’t done more than stain the gate with soot, and the ram-carriers had fled, though some of the mob were sheltering behind a cart abandoned on the bridge, whatever beast had drawn it gone.
    â€œThe gate!” someone was yelling. “Old Great Gods, man, the gate, now, hurry!” and it was him that she shouted at, a guardswoman up on the tower, gesturing.
    Zavel looked to see one leaf of the axe-scarred gate drawn back, just a handsbreadth. He didn’t for a moment understand, till the magistrate moaned again.
    Great Gods, yes, the gate. He broke into an unsteady run, the magistrate a dead weight dragging half behind him. He caught a toe in the pit left by up-prised paving stones and fell, both of them striking heavily, struggled up and heard voices behind him. Looked back.