Tain stared out at the crowd. “They’re not moving.” He squared his shoulders and pushed past me, back up to the stairs. “Silastians!” he cried. “I am your Chancellor! This is our home, and it is under attack. For the honor that we all live by, do as the Warrior-Guilder says and protect our home!” My friend’s voice shook. He was no natural orator, and he’d been thrust into a new role he’d not expected to shoulder for a long time. He wasn’t prepared. None of us were.
But Silastians lived by a system of honor, and they loved their Chancellor. They listened. Marco repeated his directions and the crowd dispersed, though wails and shouts still filled the air. I felt their confusion and terror reflected in me. We were merchants, craftsmen, students, and artists, living rich and sheltered lives in the most beautiful and cultured city in the continent. We knew nothing of the war and tyranny our ancestors had fled long ago; it had not followed them. Only the Warrior-Guild remained of that lifestyle, least respected and honored of the Guilds; and now, when they could have proven their worth, they weren’t here.
“Will the gates hold?” Tain was asking Marco.
The big man rubbed his close-cropped hair, frowning. “I do not know, Honored Chancellor. I am not … I teach weaponry, you see. I do not know much of walls.”
“Where’s Eliska?” Tain asked. “Someone find the Stone-Guilder!” He looked up at the Order Guard hanging out of the tower. “How far, Chen?”
“Two hundred treads, Chancellor, maybe less. Coming steady.”
“Honor-down, we have to be able to talk to them.” Tain stared up at the walls with a kind of fascinated horror. “What if I—”
“You can’t go up there again,” I said.
“We can’t let them attack without trying.”
“I agree,” said Marco. “But you were shot at before, Honored Chancellor. We don’t know who those people are. They may have disguised themselves as peasants in order to gain access to the city, and only when they realized the city was closed down and the gates shut did they decide to attack. We have to assume this is a well-provisioned army. So we have a short window to send out a peace negotiator before it is too dangerous to open the gate.”
Tain hesitated, then nodded. “Set it up.”
It seemed to take an eternity to find a diplomat from the Administrative Guild. A rounded, elegant woman, she visibly trembled as she took the hastily made negotiation flag, green fabric torn from a commandeered litter and a black sigil for peace in standard Trade, drawn with purloined makeup. Tain murmured encouragement, holding her shoulders, and his words seemed to calm her.
“We have no quarrel with anyone, and certainly not our own people if that is them out there,” Tain said. “Remember, we want to talk, and we’ll hear any grievances.”
As she ducked under the partially raised portcullis and through the lonely dark tunnel toward the gate, a shiver came over me. Grievances from our own people could have been brought to a determination council in any town, or appealed directly to the Council. This was something else entirely. A rebellion, or an attack from a foreign power?
The clank of the metal gates closing behind her reverberated in my chest.
An Order Guard handed out weapons from the tower as Marco scurried about, pointing and shouting, trying to organize the crowd. I was no strategist but I knew the layout inside the city didn’t favor us for any kind of battle. There was too much open space around the road and the buildings were set too far back from the wall. There would be no way of containing the spread of attackers if they made it through the gate.
I accepted a simple shortsword from the Order Guard then followed Tain up into the top of the tower with the unfamiliar weapon. We peered together through the slit window.
Below, the lone messenger, flag dragging her crooked in the wind, teetered into view. I crouched lower, watching the progressing army, hoping with everything in me that an answering green flag would emerge. The cocoon of the tower room insulated us from the panic below. Every sharp breath Tain took rasped like a scratch in my ears. Why was it taking so long?
“There!” Tain grabbed my arm.
A small contingent advanced from the army. From the distance I could make out little about the veiled figures. Were they leaders? Negotiators? Real peasants or soldiers disguised?
Closer they drew together. A vein in my lip pulsed against my gums. I tried to ignore it. The figures stopped, then …
“No!” Tain screamed in the same instant I did; the smooth draw of bows from their billowing clothes, the nocking of arrows, and it was over in a moment. “Fuck, fuck!” Tain pounded the stone, useless, hopeless, thirty treads in the air and fifty from her body, punctured with arrows, green peace turning brown with her blood.
I squeezed my eyes shut while Tain raged around the room. The shock had stolen my breath. There was to be no honor and no negotiation, then. “We need to prepare,” I said, finding my words at last.
The first of the wall defenders streamed up the external stairs on the other side of the gate, some carrying bows, some rocks, as we passed the news to Marco. He took it in stride. “They do not wish to give us time to prepare. You must get across the lake if the gate falls, Chancellor.” Outside, the thunder of feet seemed to shake the very ground. “I will check that the other gates are ready,” he said. “Chen, call the volleys.”
“In range!” someone cried from the wall moments after Marco disappeared. Tain charged down the steps and I was left scrambling after him. “Honor-down, Tain! You can’t go out there.”
He didn’t even turn around, just slipped from my grasp and leaped out onto the battlements. I swore and followed.
People lined the wall, fumbling awkwardly for spaces and tripping over dropped items. Some had bows and shot downward through the crenellations, seemingly at random, despite Chen’s timed commands in the background. Many hurled rocks and pottery and metal utensils over the edge. Others had scrambled back to the far side of the battlement, too fearful to act at all.
A crash sounded as the army collided with the gate. An arrow whizzed past me and sailed into the empty space behind the wall, dropping with deceptive softness and grace. My heart in my throat, I hunched, trying not to get in anyone’s way as I followed Tain. He moved fearlessly through the chaos, pressing to the edge of the walls to get a view below. Breathless, I finally caught up, grabbing his shoulder as I joined him between two men with bows.
“You have to get away from here!”
I snatched a glance below. I could see straight down but the blinding western sun obscured much of the movements below. Close to the wall, what looked like a great overturned boat, covered in leathers, sheltered attackers working with axes on the gate. One of our arrows found the side of a man supporting the device and he staggered and fell. I pulled back from the wall, feeling nauseous.
Faint tremors rumbled through the wall as axes struck the gate. I reached over and yanked Tain’s paluma. He stumbled and dropped back beside me.
“They can’t really be our own people,” he said in my ear. “What if—”
Before he could finish, the man next to us fell backward with a grunt, colliding into several other people, an arrow protruding from his neck. Blood pulsed through his scrambling fingers, and his mouth worked silently, like a fish.