Dragon Heart (30 page)

Lumilla's hand went out in front of her as if on a string. The crowd murmured, and Amillee cried, “Mother! No!”

“We can move into the caves,” Lumilla said, and the purse was in her hand.

“Mother! Why—” Amillee turned, and looked up at the castle. “Why is he doing this? What's going on?” She thrust one arm out, pointing. “Look!”

Everybody swung around that way, toward the castle, its thorny spires black against the sky. As she watched, a speck fell from the side of the farthest, and then another.

“Birds,” someone said. No one else spoke, and no one looked away. Amillee could feel her heart beating faster. A shower of little black bits fell from the tower. Not birds.

Her mother said, “Yes,” to the false King. She tucked the purse into her apron. “We will move into the caves.”

*   *   *

Tirza was standing at the edge of the water, where the shadow of the cliff began. The sun was behind the castle now. In the space before her, at the foot of the cliff, the soldiers had made a camp. All those men had come ashore, made cloth huts, dug fire pits, set around lines of stones to mark their places. Scattered among these they did not look so many. She could see Jeon there, among them, doing little. A horn blew, and the Imperials lined up before their officer. Now she could see how many there were, more than all the people in Undercastle. They wore the striped doublets, but no iron hats, and they did not carry pikes, but knives with wide, blunt blades: ship knives.

Jeon was walking along the tidewrack, toward her.

Suddenly with a great yell all the Imperials went rushing away past her, down the beach into the town. She waited until Jeon reached her, his face bound up with thinking, and took his hand and pulled.

Deep in his mind, he went tamely along with her. She led him on toward the town, now full of soldiers calling and waving their arms and looking around. At Aken's stall a crowd hid the big butcher from her sight. As men came away munching down on beef pies, more gathered there, the pack of bodies constantly growing.

Trollo walked by, playing his harp, and gave her a quick smile. Several children trailed him. In front of the brewery cave, Lumilla was stacking up furniture from her house.

The porch of the brewery was full of soldiers. At the weavery, more Imperials leaned on the counters, flirting with the weaver sisters. Tirza led Jeon to the cypress tree and sat on the bench, and he sat beside her. She gripped his hand still. She turned, and said, “There is nobody but us now, Jeon.”

His hand tightened around hers, but he was looking back up toward the beach, toward the big, ugly frames on the beach, where Oto rode his prancing horse up and down. She tugged at Jeon. With one hand she pointed down toward the Imperial man.

She said, “Jeon, don't do this. Don't be one of them. Luka told me, once—what use—” Now she was going to cry, thinking of Luka. She scrubbed her eyes with her hand. “Don't,” she said. “He'll kill you. He hates you.”

Now, at last, he faced her. He had that new smile on his face. He said, “You don't trust Oto. I understand that.”

Once he had almost known what she was saying, but now he didn't. A tear leaked down her face.

He said, “But he loves me, he says. He's promised to make me a Count, Tirza. Isn't that wonderful?” He laughed.

She shrieked at him, loud enough that out in the sunlight people turned to look. He put an arm around her and hugged her, pinning her to him. “You think he's lying.”

She nodded, helpless.

“Well, don't worry,” he said, and laughed again. “I'm lying, too.” He rose, and walked away, back up the beach, back toward Oto.

*   *   *

Night came. The soldiers roamed through Undercastle, drinking and eating and watching the women. Oto had settled himself in at the brewery, which blazed with lamps. Jeon went up the beach, to get back into the castle, and the Admiral of the Fleet walked out in front of him on the path and stopped. Two of Stencop's officers waited a little way off.

Stencop said, “An excellent evening, my lord,” and bowed.

Jeon bowed back, very dignified, as if he understood what was happening. He said, “So it is, my lord. I invite you to walk with me.”

“I will, thank you.” Stencop turned to pace along beside him. Now Jeon could not go into the castle, and so he made a way toward the camp, along the foot of the rock. The ensigns trailed them. Stencop walked along in silence for a while. He was a bushy man, with swathes of hair coming out from under his hat, and great caterpillar eyebrows and a beard like a nest.

He said, “My lord, I am curious. You seem to be one who understands this place.”

Jeon said, “I am a son of the castle, my lord.”

“I have many questions.”

“Perhaps I can answer them.”

They were coming to the tents, laid out in rows; this reminded Jeon suddenly of the graves at the new fort. The rows of pawns in chess. Stencop said, “My tent is nearby. We can sit down and talk.”

They went side by side down a lane between the hovels of cloth, to a bigger hovel, close under the beetling rock of the cliff. Inside were small cloth chairs and a table and a ewer of wine. A lamp suspended from the peak of the tent lit the place, and the air was close and smoky.

An ensign had followed them in, and poured two cups of the wine. Stencop said, “I found this in the town. It is acceptable.” He settled himself down on one of the flimsy cloth chairs and waved Jeon to the other. “Drink with me.” With his eyes and a nod, he sent the ensign away.

Jeon drank the country wine. Stencop poured both their cups full again.

“This—the tower seems to be losing some of its stones.”

“Yes,” Jeon said.

The admiral blinked. “This does not excite you?”

“The tower is very new,” Jeon said. “Perhaps it was not built properly.”

“Ah.” Stencop's face cleared. He drank more of the wine. The chair beneath him, too small for him, wobbled whenever he moved.

He said, “I came expecting the Lord Erdhart to be King here. All my dispatches were for King Erdhart. Halfway here, in the town they are building where the port of Santomalo was, I heard that Erdhart was dead, perhaps at the hands of local people. I was waiting for new instructions from the Holy City when another dispatch came that his sons Oto and Broga ruled in his place and I should proceed. Now arriving here I find the Lord Broga dead also, and the place in an uproar.”

Jeon said, “It was a bad winter.”

Stencop said, “So I have given the messages and my remaining cargo to King Oto.” He shifted on the chair, which groaned under his weight. One beefy forearm rested on the table, and his voice quieted. “He tells me that his father died in a coup attempt, which he suppressed. Broga in an accident, a fall or something, he is unclear. He says the castle is treacherous and we should not go there and he will live there no more.” Stencop's jaw worked beneath the thickets of whiskers. “But in the town I have heard other stories. That Broga was murdered, by—in revenge. By local—I know not what to think.” Beneath the bushy brows his eyes poked at Jeon.

Jeon said, “My lord, I am the King's servant.”

“Be candid with me.”

“Sir, I am.” Jeon spread his hands. The little tabletop between them had a pattern of inlaid squares, like a chessboard. “Do you play chess, sir?”

“No.”

“A pity. Nobody will play with me anymore, and I was just getting the feel of it.”

Stencop's big hand gripped the edge of the table. His body shifted on the chair. “You think these pirates will attack here.”

“The full moon is a week away. If not then, the next time the tide will be high at sunrise. They will come. Nothing has stopped them yet. Undercastle is full of things they want.”

“My lord Oto seems unconvinced.”

Jeon said, “My lord Oto does not believe anything he hasn't thought of first himself.” He traced the squares of the tabletop with his forefinger. “It's a poor realm where the King is his own courtier.”

“Hunh.” The admiral's eyebrows moved up and down. “Perhaps.”

“But we should at least prepare,” Jeon said. “You have all the men and all the weapons. Who is in command here?”

Stencop was frowning. “Well, the King, surely, the local man is always … unless…” His thick lips pushed out thoughtfully. “At least that's something to be done.”

His head turned; in the distance, there was a long, muffled crash. Jeon leapt up, and went outside, Stencop on his heels.

*   *   *

The waxing moon hung over the bay. All the lights of Undercastle shone, even up on the cliff, but brightest around the brewery. Tirza lurked by the way that led onto the Jawbone, watching the uproar on the beach. They were singing, out there, and dancing, very badly; they were all drunk. She wanted to go out onto the Jawbone, but she wanted to see Jeon also, and he was in the camp, off to her left.

Her ears filled, and then the sound swelled in them, a thunder of falling stone. Under her feet, the ground shook a moment.

She ran up the moonlit beach, to where she could see all the castle. In Undercastle people were screaming. At the edge of the shadow of the castle, Tirza stopped on the sand, and looking back she saw just beyond the four straight old towers the new tower tilting over.

One side of it was gone already, as if something had gnawed it, the little cap of its roof sliding sideways over the fallen stone. She caught her breath. As the tower leaned, it shed more stones, until in a hail of pieces it all disappeared.

She gave a yell, triumphant, but behind her, in Undercastle, a howl of terror went up.

“The castle is falling!”

“No!” she called. “No, it is the new tower—” and stopped. The mob was packed there on the moonlit beach, immobile, a single swarm, paying heed only to what they saw, and she knew they did not understand.

*   *   *

The moon was bright as a thousand lamps. With the others Amillee stood, trembling, her gaze on the dark shape of the castle, waiting for the next tower to fall—for everything up there to crumble into dust, what had been there all the long ages.

Nothing happened. Only the one tower had come down. The great crown of spires stood against the sky, solid as the rock beneath it. The crowd sighed, giving up some of its watchfulness, and began to move around.

Beside her, the priest said, “This is evil.”

“Well,” Amillee said. She had seen the castle every day of her life, but she could not really tell which of the towers was gone. In daylight maybe she would. That might help her understand what this meant. The priest swayed, holding her with one hand to keep his feet. In the other he had a jug.

“Nothing like this happens without some sign,” the priest said. “It's not ordinary. It's just once. Means something. Evil.”

It meant, Amillee thought, that she should act, and not wait to be led. She backed away, looking around, wondering what she should do. The priest staggered away from her. The jug was empty and he dropped it, and his voice rang out, surprisingly loud.

“Listen to me. This is the end of the world. We must pray—”

Amillee muttered, “Damn you, fool,” and started after him. The crowd was turning toward him, and he wandered into the light of the brewery.

“I call to you, I say, I say, we must give ourselves to repentance, renounce the evils, and go back to the old ways, or—or—”

On the porch of the brewery somebody shouted, “Get him! That's a deserter!”

The priest staggered backward, his voice failing, as a flood of striped doublets poured down from the porch. Amillee bounded up to his side and pushed him behind her. Locking arms with Trollo on her right and on the left a girl from the weavery, Amillee took her place in a wall of bodies. Behind her, people clustered around the priest, protecting him. A voice rose in a confident whoop. “We beat them before— Remind them who we are, hey!”

Amillee faced the Imperials, who came straight at her. They had no pikes, only their short knives, which didn't even have points. For a moment, as they came, she imagined they would reach her and bounce harmlessly away, but then they smashed into her, and she was thrown down, and they trampled over her, and something struck her on the side of the head.

She lay there, dizzy, her hand aching, and a hurt jabbing her ribs when she breathed. Somebody had stepped on her hand. She tasted dust in her mouth. Painfully she stood up, looking down the beach.

The Imperials had rushed on after the priest, and the crowd was bundling him away toward the ale caves. The mass of people pushed back at the soldiers, jeering, at first still making a game of this.

The Imperials waded into them, clubbing with the flats of their knives, hacking with the blades. More soldiers rushed up through the dark. Outnumbered, the crowd began to scatter. The last few, backing away, launched a hail of stones at the soldiers. Amillee looked around for a weapon. In the deceptive clarity of the moonlight the fighting was a dark rumbling mass on the beach. She could not tell one from the other, which she loved and which she hated. Then she saw, nearer, a body crumpled on the ground.

She knew at once it was Trollo, by the cap, and she went and knelt down beside him. He had locked arms with her, when this all started. They had stood together against the Imperials. He was still alive, and she slid her arm around his shoulders and lifted him. He turned his head slowly toward her. His face was split in half like a melon, blood spurting from his forehead, his nose and mouth. His eyes met hers, clear, wide blue eyes, seeing her, and then he was not there anymore, his eyes open, but seeing nothing.

Amillee held him still, unable to make herself move. On the beach there was no more fighting, only screams, and the savage, triumphant yells of the soldiers. More bodies on the ground. Somebody tugged on her.

“Come on, girl,” her mother said. “Hurry. Come on. Leave him, poor Trollo. Come.” Amillee stood up, and Lumilla put an arm around her and pulled her away, toward the ale caves.