Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,166

ram snugged up to the gate. The men inside started a work chant.

An argument broke out behind the Perfect. He turned.

Soames Richeut had materialized. He was determined to remove Kedle from her post despite venomous abuse from every woman within range. Soames glared at them like he wanted to remember their faces.

Kedle would not leave. Her companions made it clear they would not let her be coerced.

Brother Candle wondered who was taking care of the children.

Soames yelped in pain when his mother-in-law barked him one with the butt of the shaft she was about to load into the ballista.

Brother Candle turned back to the crane swinging its long arm out above the Arnhander tortoise. A one-ton stone “dolphin” on a chain hung from the arm. The Perfect had no idea where that had come from. It looked more like a penis than a denizen of the deep. Whatever its name or provenance, it was effective when it struck.

The first drop cracked and shifted the massive timbers of the tortoise. It took the crane crew twenty minutes, under fire, to hoist the dolphin again. The second drop smashed through the timbers and injured several men. The third time the dolphin fell two yards farther out, made sure the tortoise could not be dragged away for repairs.

Direcian veterans issued through a sally port, butchered the ram crew, and set the tortoise afire.

The Arnhanders would have to clear the wreckage before they could bring another ram to the gate.

The crane operators began to shift it to attack the sappers chipping at the wall—though those men had to deal with hot sand, quicklime, and firebombs already.

Brother Candle kept up a conversation with the Duke, as though Tormond understood and was in charge. Tormond had been positioned in such wise that he could be seen by nearby defenders, all of whom conspired in the pretense.

In fact, there was no real command, insofar as Brother Candle could see. People just did what they thought needed doing, feeling around for what they could do best.

Soames Richeut went away for an hour, then returned to berate Kedle again. He was not kind. Nor were Kedle’s friends kind to him.

The Perfect lost patience with the bad husband. He went to admonish the man. Kedle’s crew shifted a hoarding so she could loose another deadly shaft.

Someone outside awaited that opportunity.

Richeut stepped in front of Kedle’s ballista to block her aim. The Arnhander bolt hit him in the right temple and passed on through his head. The marksman shouted, “Thirteen!” in an accent from the Pail.

In the calmest murder Brother Candle ever witnessed Kedle Richeut avenged her husband before his body stopped twitching. Almost before the celebrant outside finished congratulating himself.

A slowly building tumult developed amongst the Arnhanders. When Brother Candle dared look he saw gaudy King Regard being held erect by his heralds. Kedle’s shaft had transfixed him. He was alive but that would not last. The gut wound would kill him slowly. Only the absolute best sorcerer’s care would help now, unlikely in an army ruled by the Society.

Kedle did not wait on peritonitis. She sent a second shaft. It passed through Regard’s equerry, Thierry, then the King, then lodged in the haunch of the King’s confessor, Simon du Montrier.

Brother Candle started, turned, found that Tormond had been led up to see the enemy. Tormond gurgled something the Perfect thought sounded like, “There’ll be no getting over that.”

Brother Candle mused, “This is history. This is a tipping point. Three kings in one week. Possibly the three most important in the western world. Everything is going to change.”

The future could be bleak indeed. The successes of the Calziran Crusade, the Artecipean campaign, and the triumph at Los Naves de los Fantas might all have been rendered naught these past several days.

Only the Perfect thought that way. There was dancing and singing on the wall and a shower of abuse on the enemy. There would be city-wide drunken celebrations later, after the militia finally fought. And succeeded to the point where only the fastest scuttlers among the Arnhanders and Society scum managed to escape.

The Khaurenesaine had been saved, at incredible cost. But the storm still loomed over the rest of the Connec.

31. Lucidia: End Around

Per instructions from Shamramdi Nassim Alizarin shut down traffic past Tel Moussa. He drove his soldiers to exhaustion harassing the Unbeliever. The enemy, he was sure, would realize that something was up. Lone travelers could not all be intercepted. Those who did get through would carry rumors.