“They’re in place!” someone yelled, and I found a spot behind the new wall to hoist myself up to see. The different-colored stones had been cobbled together from an assortment of other buildings and remade into this fat, triangular extension to the tower; it couldn’t compare to the strength of the city walls, but Eliska’s Guild had done the best they could in limited time.
“Loooad!” someone cried. Our own catapult, the one built directly on the tower roof, was hidden by the lip of the tower; it now burst into action, sending a great chunk of rock hurtling over the water toward the opposing machines. Even their drums seemed to hold their breath a moment as the rock spun soundlessly in the air …
… and crashed short of the line of weapons, plopping harmlessly into the lake in a shower of white spray blossoming in the dark.
The rebel army cheered, a great roar of sound that drained my spirit. They retaliated immediately; fear drove me down from my perch on the wall as the stones sailed over the lake. The smash of stone on stone shook the structure with each deafening impact. From the sound of it, perhaps half of their shots had reached some part of the Finger.
“Five in the lake, Credo,” Chen called down to me, her face oddly cheerful underneath her helmet. “Three on the bridge, no harm done there. Four hit us. No damage yet.”
But they had our entire lower city to dismantle, and therefore an endless supply of projectiles. We wouldn’t hold out forever.
A cheer from our side spun me around. Eliska led a procession of siege weapons across the grass, all on wheels. Some were catapults, but others I didn’t recognize; low things like flat carts, loaded with massive metal javelins.
“Not much testing done on these yet,” Eliska told me as I met her. “But they’re more mobile than the catapults and we should be able to get them through the gate on the bridge and shoot at anyone approaching over it.”
Behind me, another series of impacts and splashes signaled another round of fire. I suppressed a shiver. “Good luck,” I said, moving out of her way.
I moved back out of range behind the trenches nearby with a crowd of others as the new machines rolled out onto the east side of Trickster’s. Budua the Scribe-Guilder joined me there, gray like a ghost in the moonlight. We watched together, helpless, as the catapults exchanged fire. The rebels, cautious of our new javelin machines, were not yet advancing over the bridge. The first stone smashed into our makeshift wall and I winced as a spiderweb of cracks sprang out from the impact zone. Beside me, Budua didn’t flinch.
“Credo Jovan!” A small voice came through the noise. Little Erel, Tain’s messenger, had spotted me and scurried toward us. “I’ve been looking for you, Credo.”
I glanced around me. Budua pressed her lips together, frowning; she now knew the truth about Tain. “What is it, Erel?” I dropped my voice, trying not to worry. Behind us another mighty crash shook the wall. Had Tain relapsed?
“Um, it’s the lady. Hadrea.”
My heart pounded a distracting rhythm in my head. “What’s happened?”
“I’ve been trying to find you, Credo, but every time I go somewhere you’ve moved somewhere else.” His tone rang with the exasperation of a twelve-year-old discovering the world wouldn’t move in convenient predictability.
The crowd cheered suddenly and we all spun around to see that one of our catapult strikes from the Finger had successfully hit one of the extended pier platforms the rebels had built over the lake. The platform jerked and tilted and their catapult began to slide toward the water. I tapped Erel’s shoulder and he snapped his gaping mouth shut.
“She left a message for you earlier. Before the bells rang. She said … um, that she was going to the Oll Woorin.”
“To the what?”
More cheers as the frantic rebels lost control of the sliding machine and the floating platform tipped more dramatically, sending the catapult toppling almost gracefully into the silky waters of the lake. This time I had to gently take Erel’s chin and redirect his gaze to me.
“Sorry, Credo. I think she said the Oll Woorin. But I don’t know what that means. She didn’t explain! She said you would know.”
Another enormous crack split the air as our wall took a hit. Across the water, the rebels started up another chant, and unease spread around me, a palpable thing.
Frustrated, I shook my head. “I don’t know what that means, Erel. She must have told you something else.” Oll Woorin, I thought. The name tickled with familiarity. Where have I heard that before? My tired brain felt woolly as I scanned the lakeside blankly, trying to think. I couldn’t remember where I’d heard the word.
“Os-Woorin, do you mean?” Budua said suddenly, and Erel nodded in relief. “Oh, yes, Scribe-Guilder. It could have been that, now you say it.”
That I had definitely heard, but through the increasing pounding of my heartbeat in my head and the rising chant from across the water, I couldn’t catch the thought. I looked helplessly at Budua, and the Scribe-Guilder cocked her head. “From the song, Credo. The children’s rhyme. Toil in secret/day and night/build it up/get it right/work so hard so we don’t fall/the great Os-Woorin saved us all.…”
“Old wooden, you mean. The great old wooden saved us all.” Everyone knew that rhyme; the stacking game that accompanied it was played on every street corner and in every garden in the city. Falling from the top of the stack was the cause of many a childhood injury, but it never dropped in popularity.
Budua shook her head. “No. Oh, I know that’s how the children sing it these days. Even in your day, I suppose. But they’re not the words. Os-Woorin, not old wooden. What is an ‘old wooden’?”
“What’s an Os-Woorin?” I countered, but already my brain was tickling again. Os-Woorin. It sounded even more familiar, and it wasn’t because of the rhyme.
“I don’t know,” Budua said. “But that’s the right word, I’m certain of that.”
Another crash and then a hush on our side. “Darfri magic,” I heard someone whisper, and as if indeed the Darfri had summoned their spirits across the lake around their catapults a heavy mist was forming, obscuring our view of their machines. I shivered. The lake was often misty at dawn, but this was something different. Had they dropped some chemical in the lake that was reacting with the water? It was growing harder to disregard or explain away the strangeness.
And then my memory triggered. Of course; Hadrea had told me. The great spirit of the lake, that was its name: Os-Woorin. Our history books might have skimmed over the old religion but sometimes truth was buried in children’s rhymes and stories. So Hadrea had gone to the Os-Woorin? What did that mean? Back to the shrine Eliska and her lover had built in the cave? Did she intend to try to ask a boon of the lake spirit herself? It hadn’t worked for Eliska and Dara, and presumably the rebel Darfri would have tried the same thing. But I wondered; maybe Eliska had given her some other idea about how to contact Os-Woorin. I had sometimes suspected Hadrea knew more about Darfri magic than she was perhaps meant to. Did she know something Eliska did not?
I left Budua and went back to the Finger. The Stone-Guilder was on the roof with the catapult, wind whipping her hair, helping with adjustments to the machine. I dared a peek over the edge; the mist had hidden the rebel platforms entirely, but even as I watched a stone hurtled from the cloud and struck the base of the tower near the bridge, and we were all jolted by the impact. Someone beside me cried out as flying debris hit her in the face. I ducked back to safety.