The Walls of Air Page 0,33

that was the gate. Alwir came striding down the steps toward them, looking relieved and concerned and, Gil thought, just a trifle annoyed. It didn't help that Aide immediately and automatically accepted the blame for herself and hung back like a schoolgirl caught out in a scrape. Her brother took her arm gently and led her up the steps.

In the gate passage, everyone was talking at once. The gates were closed - six inches of solid steel. The well-oiled locking mechanisms clicked softly as the rings were turned. There seemed to Gil to be hundreds of people in that ten-foot passageway - Guards and Alwir's red-uniformed troopers, volunteers and herdkids, and people who were idle, curious, or ineffectually helpful. The narrow space rang with their chatter and was filled with crowding faces and flaring torches. Gil heard herself gabbling out what had happened, explaining it to Seya and Gnift. Strong hands rested on her shoulders and back; her friends were all around her. Before her, barely visible through the massed backs, the jumping shadows played crazily over Queen and Chancellor, grimy little sister and tall brother sharing the big man's vast, dark cape.

As they crowded out from the inner gates into the Aisle, Gil passed them. She could see Aide talking earnestly, her wet hair shaken around her face with the intensity of her speech. Alwir stopped, listening gravely to her.

Gil was close enough to hear him say, 'Aide, I'm sorry. There is nothing I can do

'You can try!' Minalde cried passionately. 'You can at least talk to him! Not turn them away like tramps!'

'You are a mother,' the Chancellor said quietly, 'and easily touched by pity. I am a commander. Janus and his foraging party set out this afternoon for the river valleys, and it may be that we can reassess the situation when they return.'

'It will be too late by then!' she insisted, and her brother caught her by the shoulders, looking down at her white, intense face, her burning eyes.

'Aide, please understand,' he said softly. She turned her face away, her cheek resting against the soft beaded leather of his gauntleted wrist. He put a gentle hand to her cheek and brought her eyes back to his. 'Aide, my sister - don't undermine me, I beg of you. If you go against me, the Keep will dissolve into chaos, and we will all perish. Please. Don't go behind my back again.'

She nodded wretchedly, and Alwir placed a comforting arm around her waist. Aide leaned against her brother as if exhausted, her black hair spilling down over the velvet of his shoulder, and he led her back toward the Royal Sector that was their home.

Standing among the Guards, Gil watched them, two dark figures silhouetted in the leaping warmth of the torchlight. Well, what the hell, she thought. Now that Rudy's gone, he's all she has. And I can even understand Alwir's not wanting to take in men who will hate him for turning them away before.

But nevertheless, she felt as if she had just seen a death warrant signed for that gentle priest and his ragged congregation among the ruins of the Tall Gates.
Chapter 5
'Holy Christ!'

'Really, Rudy,' Ingold returned, in the mildest of tones. There's no need for concern. They're only dooic.'

'Famous last words.' Rudy stood irresolutely in the sunken roadbed, warily scanning the filthy host of semihumans that had appeared with such suddenness on the banks above. 'That's what Custer said about the Indians.' Ingold blinked at him in surprise. 'Never mind.' He drew his sword and set himself for a fight.

Back in Karst, Rudy had seen tame and enslaved dooic shambling along after their masters with frightened, doglike eyes; he had thought them pathetic. Feral and naked, baring their yellow tusks along both sides of the empty road, they were an entirely other matter. There must have been twenty or more big males in the band; the tallest of them, standing in the centre of the road with a huge rock grasped in one distorted hand, was close to Rudy's own height. Ingold had told him once that the dooic would eat anything, including burros - possibly even including human beings, if they could kill them. He wondered how much effect his and Ingold's swords would have against so many.

Ingold clicked his tongue reprovingly and placed a comforting hand on Che's head. The burro was on the verge of hysterics - not that it ever took much to reduce him to that state - but