The Steerswoman's Road (39 page)

Close to Rowan’s ear, Bel whispered, “There’s always one
guard at that post.”

“What’s keeping Wiliam?”

“There’s no way to know. That man is inner guard; he
probably knows about Liane. I’ll have to catch him off-guard. You stay here.”
Bel paused a moment, thinking, then began running noisily down the stairs,
footsteps startlingly loud. “You! Come here, lend a hand—”

“What? What are you doing here?”

Standing silently, waiting for Bel to do her job, Rowan was
half distracted by a short, faint vibration beneath her feet. She looked down
at the carpet.

“I’m guarding that steerswoman—something’s wrong!”

“Wait here, I’ll get help.”

“There’s no time, you’ll have to do—”

There was another vibration, stronger; Rowan looked up, and
an instant later she heard distant thunder.

“What was that?” And the man made one more sound, a wet choking
cough.

Rowan knew what it was. She flew down the stairs to find Bel
pulling the point of her spear from the prone man’s throat. “Was that noise
from the north?” Bel asked. Far off, someone shouted, a long muffled sentence.

“Yes,” Rowan replied. Their way to the gate led south.

“About time.” Bel abandoned her spear for the dead man’s. “Let’s
go.”

Rowan resumed her place in the lead, struggling to maintain
a relaxed, casual pace. Halfway to the door with the guard-spell, they were
surprised by a bleary-eyed servant who peered from a room in perplexity. “Themselves
are up to something,” Bel explained, offhand, as they passed. “Go back to
sleep.” The man gaped at her, then vanished with a look of fear.

Again the thunder rolled, louder. Wordless shouts came from
behind, and the two women understood simultaneously that the time had come to
run.

As Rowan reached the door to the outer keep, the floor suddenly
bucked once, then shuddered, like a ship hit by heavy seas. The air was full of
a roaring rumble. Nearby, someone screamed. Pulling the door open, Rowan pushed
Bel through, and in an instant the Outskirter handed her the hidden sword.

There was thunder to the north, and the floor writhed
unbelievably beneath their feet. Bel was thrown to the ground, but Rowan stood
balancing wildly. About her, half-dressed people had appeared, clinging to the
walls, crying to their gods and their families.

Abruptly and simultaneously, all the lamps went out. In the
darkness Rowan found Bel and dragged her to her feet. Fading thunder left the
air filled with shouts; then a crowd of organized footsteps approached,
stumbled against the fallen, and reorganized with curses: soldiers. The squad
swept noisily past Rowan and Bel, hurrying north. Bel made an anguished sound. “We
have no light.”

Throwing one hand against the door, Rowan oriented herself,
her internal map twisting in her mind. She exulted. “We don’t need it. This is
better.” She guided Bel’s hand to her shoulder. “Slowly.”

“We can’t see where to go.”

“I know the route.” She led the way, keeping measured
stride, desperately matching her movement with the vivid image in her mind.
One of the terrified residents stumbled against her, and she shoved him away
roughly.

Pausing, she shuffled sideways, groping with her left foot
to find the edge of the stairway she knew would be there. “Down.”

A handful of people pushed past them, their voices a chaos
of panic. Some took the stairs, stumbling, crying, and they broke around Rowan
and Bel like a swirl of water. Rowan clutched the banister and stepped
carefully, Bel still gripping her shoulder.

Reaching the bottom, Rowan saw a moving light in the distance,
bouncing weirdly, approaching amidst the sounds of many feet. It was another
squad of soldiers, their leader carrying a brilliant glowing object: a magic
lamp like the wall sconces, but mobile. The beam played across the small crowd,
swept once across Rowan, then returned to her. Thinking quickly, she turned her
back to them and clung to Bel as if afraid, hiding her sword with her body,
letting the light catch Liane’s silver-blue cloak.

“The wizards’ dolly,” Bel shouted above the noise of panic-stricken
civilians. She waved them on. “I’ll take care of her.”

The light swung away. Someone shouted to the growing crowd
in an authoritative voice, “Stay where you are. Stay out of the way. It’s being
dealt with. Stay where you are.” Protests and begging questions were ignored as
the squad hurried on.

In a sea of babbling voices, Rowan thought furiously. Her
dead reckoning had brought them but a few turns from the front gate, but that
gate was guarded at the inside. How could they get past?

She could hear the now-buried nervousness in the people’s
voices, the panic lying just below the surface. None of them knew what was
happening, and all were afraid. She briefly felt pity for them, and then an
idea came to her.

Drawing a deep breath, she let out a long wailing shriek,
feeling Bel startle beside her. “We have to get out!” Rowan screamed. She
stepped into the crowd, clutching, and found someone. She shook him wildly,
shouting into his face, “It’s magic, something’s happening! We’ll all be
trapped!” He tried to twist away in panic, and Rowan heard those nearby begin
to echo her words, voices rising.

She shoved her unwilling assistant forward brutally. “That way!
The front gate is that way!” Her hands found more people, and she pushed them,
shouting, emitting the most bloodcurdling screams she could manufacture.

Panic spread. Rowan quieted herself and pulled back against
the wall, out of the way. Someone took up the shout “This way!” and ran
staggering, calling others after him. With a goal for their fear, the people
fell into loose organization, helping each other as they stumbled toward
escape.

Rowan felt sudden fear. “Bel?”

“Here.” The Outskirter’s voice came from nearby, to Rowan’s
left. Relief. “We stay at the back.” She found Bel’s hand and reoriented
herself. “Come on.”

The group found its own stumbling way to the gate, and Rowan
and Bel followed, more by tracking the sounds than by the steers-woman’s skill.
A burst of starlight ahead, and a babble of voices, and the crowd met the four
startled guards at the gate.

The sergeant had a torch of real fire and grim presence of
mind. “Calm down. No one’s leaving.”

There was a chorus of protests, and Bel shouted wildly, “It’s
magic, something magic’s got loose! It’s killed the wizards!”

Rowan took it up. “It’s out of control!” She thought that
might even be true.

“It isn’t,” the man replied against the cries of the people,
but his face showed that he doubted. His men tried to herd the crowd back, but
a woman broke through suddenly and ran down the causeway, one of the guards
following, cursing. She threw herself against the spell-locked iron bars at the
end, and he gripped her brutally and dragged her away.

A streak of fire flew toward the magic gate and lodged
there, spitting sparks. There was a burst of light, a loud
crack,
and
the stone and iron flew apart in a hundred pieces. The woman collapsed in a
bizarre cloud of cloth and blood, and the soldier clutched at his face and
fell, screaming. A shadowed shape ran to the gate from the road.

“Now!” Bel shouted, pushing through the stunned crowd. Following,
Rowan broke through in time the see the sergeant’s head fall from his body, and
Bel’s swing, out of control, ending in a bystander’s chest. Rowan stabbed her
blade in a disbelieving guard’s face, wrenched it free, then turned to see the
last guard stepping back, stiff-legged, briefly unmanned by surprise. The crowd
fell back.

Rowan and Bel ran along the causeway. Halfway across, they
were met by Willam; he carried his bow and three arrows, their heads aflame.
Stopping, he gave two arrows to Bel. “Hold these.”

Rowan pulled at him. “Are you mad? They won’t be distracted
forever—they may be coming now.”

Bel wrenched her away from him with furious strength. “Shut
up.” Abruptly, Rowan’s mind reorganized itself, and she turned to look back at
the fortress.

She saw Will’s first arrow end in the last guard’s chest,
and the man clutched at it, shrieking.

The dark towers were outlined by a glow of fire in the north
quarter. Ordered shouts and chaotic cries came to her ears. With a look of
desperate concentration, Willam set his feet carefully and lifted his head
toward the overhang of the main entrance. His burning arrow flew high, slowed,
arched, and fell. By its light, Rowan had seen its goal: the window of an
observation post, now unmanned. He’ll never make that shot, she thought, then
knew with certainty that he would.

The last arrow lofted, painfully slow at the top of its
flight, then clattered against the sill and rolled in. There was a pause, then
flickering light as something inside caught fire.

“
Now
run!
” the boy screamed, and the three ran
madly, staggering past the pile of hones and raw meat, clambering over the remains
of the ruined gate. Just as they reached the road, Rowan felt something like a
huge invisible hand smash against her hack, pick her up, fling her forward in a
crowd of flying rock, and flail her body once against a wall of stone.

She came to with a dark shape crouched over her: the Outskirter.
Bel looked over her shoulder. “She’s alive.” There was no response from Willam.

Rowan sat up and found that parts of her body were numb: her
left arm and hand, the left side of her chest, the inside of her right forearm.
Her right knee throbbed; her back stung as if scored. As she pulled herself to
her feet with the Outskirter’s help, the grip of her left hand failed,
seemingly because some of the fingers bent backward.

She limped over to where Willam stood silent, at the end of
a road that now stopped abruptly at the edge of a cliff. Rowan looked out at
the fortress.

The causeway was gone, along with the front entrance and the
entire front face. Beyond stood a maze of half-ruined walls, and then standing
walls, open rooms clinging to their sides like barnacles, all seen by the glow
of fire in the ruins of the west quarter, where horses screamed.

As she watched, two of the distant suspended rooms collapsed
to the ground like silent sighs.

An immeasurable force, set loose by a boy. A giant fist that
smashed, a giant hand that flung stone through the air ... “Did you know it
would do this?”

He stood silent, expressionless, looking at his work; then
he nodded minutely.

Bel came up behind them. “It’s a good job, don’t you think?”
She grinned whitely in a face blackened with dirt and soot.

Rowan touched the silent boy’s shoulder and for a moment was
amazed that he was mere flesh and blood, merely human. There was no magic to he
seen in him. He was only a boy of the common folk, but he had done what seemed
impossible. “Willam ... will you stay with us?”

He turned to her, copper eyes blankly reflecting distant
fire. “For a while. Where are we going?”

In this flickering quiet, in the silence after the shock,
the world seemed vague, and her mind slowed. She groped for an answer. “To the
Outskirts?” Bel asked.

Of its own accord, information ordered itself in the steerswoman’s
mind and gave her replies without conscious effort. “I told Shammer and Dhree I
was going there. They may have passed it on.”

“To the Archives?” Willam suggested.

“I need to get my information to them, but I won’t do it in
person. If the wizards think I’ve gone there, they might harm it.” Clinging to
the framework of her ordered knowledge, her thoughts took shape again, and she
knew what to do. “We need a defended position. Arms, and someone to direct
them, someone who won’t fail to stand by me.”

“Where do we find that?”

“Wulfshaven. Artos.”

The city of Wulfshaven held its breath.

One week earlier, Artos had unexpectedly ordered his
soldiers to battle-readiness. Word was sent to those on leave, and they came
into town from their furloughs, faces wary and perplexed. The citizens they
passed questioned them, but they had no answers to give.

Two days later, Artos called his reserves to active duty,
and those men and women kissed their spouses, children, and parents, and set up
their encampments on the lawns of his mansion and in open fields around the
city limits. The sentries on the perimeter were not concentrated in any one
direction.

The day after that, a troop of cavalry was sent north,
followed by another of foot soldiers. Their destination was not known, but
message-runners sent to their position returned only a day later.

And the next day, word came that Artos was no longer in his
mansion but kept residence in the small fort that barracked his regulars.

Daily business proceeded, but with many glances over the
shoulder and much speculation in taverns and in private.

In the Trap and Net, as everywhere, speculation was very active
and very quiet. Wary glances were directed at the door as each new customer
arrived, and when at last it was a steerswoman who entered, one of the drinkers
hailed her with a gesture, saying to his companions, “Now we’ll learn
something, I reckon.”

But Rowan ignored the summons and stepped quietly to a corner
table overlooking the harbor, where two men with tankards before them sat alone
in friendly conversation. She stood without speaking until one of them looked
up at her. “I’ve been waiting,” she said then.

The wizard Corvus examined her with a mild gaze. “I rather
thought you might be,” he admitted. “It must be very boring.”

There was a long pause. “Hardly.”

He laughed. “Then you are easily amused. Why don’t you join
me?” He spoke to his companion, whom Rowan recognized as a local fisherman. “Selras,
would you excuse us? I believe I have some business with the steerswoman.”

The fisherman absented himself politely, but with a
perplexed expression. He would have a tale to tell that night, Rowan thought,
of a wizard and a steerswoman who against all custom and expectation had
business with each other. She wondered to whom he would tell it, and what the
ending might be.