The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)
• • •
Lower.
• • •
The stink and the cacophony of the horde are intolerable. Such a press of humanity and animals in such close confines. On the higher ground pavilions stand, decked with crests of arms. The great houses of Slov are there. The high and the mighty have come with their knights and levies. Among the forests of standards are the arms of nobles from Zagre, Sudriech, even Mayar. There cannot be less than thirty thousand men here. Perhaps fifty thousand.
• • •
I’m falling. Falling. Toward the outer wall. Unseen I descend among the troops that crowd the top of the east-most wall tower. There are a hundred archers here, smooth iron skullcaps fluted across the neck, chain-mail coifs, leather jerkins set with iron plates, skirts of overlapping leather strips, iron-studded. I have seen such armour on stands along the long gallery of Roma Hall. As a child I used to hide behind one suit in particular, by the west stair, and leap out to shock the maids.
A scorpion bolt-lobber stands at the front of the tower, aimed out between the crenulations at the distant foe. The operating crew are holding back a respectful distance whilst gathered immediately behind the engine a small group of nobility debate some issue.
In a moment I stand amongst them. Next to me is a huge warrior in battered platemail, heavy-duty stuff fashioned in the old style from black iron. He glances my way but he sees through me.
“We can hold for relief. If it takes two months we can hold,” he says, eyes fierce and dark, set in a brutal face, a black beard bristling over his lantern jaw, threaded by a pale scar.
“Damn that!” The speaker whirls from her contemplation of the enemy. She stands four fingers over six foot, her build athletic, strong, young with it . . . maybe eighteen. Her armour is gilded, and worked in enamels across it are the burning spears of the Red March. No vanity this though, the steel is full gauge and without ornament. A soldier’s armour. “If we let them bide here the Czar’s path west lies open. The Steppes will be at Vermillion’s gates before the harvest.”
I watch her face, broad and angular, pale for a woman of the March—beneath a shock of dark red hair, angry hazel eyes, full lips. I know this face.
“Contaph.” She advances on the knight beside me. Even a woman of her stature has to look up at the man. “Can we attack? Sally forth? They won’t be expecting an attack.”
An intake of breath at this from the men around her, knight captains and lords by their armour. I can understand this. There are not enough troops within the castle to challenge the host outside. I know this without looking. The castle could not hold so many.
“They won’t be expecting an attack, princess,” says Contaph. “But they are ready for one, even so. Kerwcjz is no fool.”
“A deputation!” This from a man at the wall, with a spyglass to his eye.
The princess leads the nobles to the battlements, archers parting to make space. “Tell me,” she says.
“Ten riders under a white flag. An emissary. And a prisoner. A woman. A girl—”
The princess snatches the spyglass and sets it to her own eye. “Gwen!”
“Kerwcjz has your sister?” Contaph’s fist tightens on the pommel of his sword, the iron plates of his gauntlet grating one against the next. “This means Omera has fallen.”
“Give me your bow,” the princess demands of the nearest archer.
“Alica!” A strained whisper from the man beside her, smaller but similar in his colouring.
“Princess,” she says. The bow is in her hands, her eyes on his—dangerous. “Call me by my name again, cousin, and I will drop you from this wall.”
She pulls an arrow from the archer’s quiver. “It’s a good bow?”
“Y-yes . . . princess.” The archer stutters it out. “Pulls a hair to the left if you over-draw. But that’s not a worry—it’s too much bow for a wo—”
Princess Alica strings the arrow and draws it to her ear, pointing up at the great keep tower back beyond the second wall. “Yes?”
“A hair to the left, your majesty.” The man backs away. “Two fingers on a fifty-yard target.”
“They’ve drawn up.” The cousin at the wall.
The princess lets the bow relax and comes to watch. Nine of the men have spread into a line on their horses. The emissary and the captive ride forward five more yards. The girl is in silks, side-saddle, she looks no more than thirteen, maybe fourteen. The man is fat, his armour adjusted for it, his neck thick and reddened by the Red March sun. He wears a blue plumed helm and a long turquoise cloak.