Inos’s head swam with sudden relief. She swayed on her perch and felt her shoulders being steadied. “I appoint you leader, then. Bring your men to the bailey with the others! Revenge!”
A shout of “Revenge!” sprang up, but she thought she heard a few of ”Gods save the queen!” also. Then she was on her way to the door again.
“Even better!” Rap crowed, hauling her along the alley. She was breathless, soaking wet inside all her cumbersome garments. He almost dragged her up a long flight of stairs to the Sailor’s Head.
That was where she first noticed women present, and she added a new command: ”Women come, also, and attend to the girls those animals stole! They must be rescued unharmed!” And there it was the women who started the shouting.
The Golden Ship . . . The King’s Men . . . The Three Bears . . .
She had never realized how many saloons Krasnegar had. She made a note to tease Rap about his experience with them all. And they were not a third of the way up the hill yet.
Then he pulled her into a side corridor and stopped. “Listen!”
She listened—a deep roar, far away, like surf or continuous thunder. It was all around them. The town had come alive like a stirred anthill.
“The men of Krasnegar!”
“Rap! We’ve done it! We’ve done it! No, you did it.”
“It was you,” he said softly.
It was the weapons, mostly. Even an adept should not be this effective, and she suspected he’d put a sorcery on her, a majesty. But he gave her no time to ask.
“Fasten your coat! Some of them are ahead of us. We’ve got plenty already, and they’ll collect more. Ready?”
Shock!
Again, cold and dark like hammerblows . . . She gasped and clutched her coat over her chest. “Rap! You didn’t give me time!”
“No time!”
They were standing at the postern gate again, and he was staring back across the drift-filled yard, awash with moonlight. A narrow track across it had been trampled clear by many feet, leading from the mouth of Royal Wynd, the covered way that connected castle and town. A wider opening in the walls marked the start of the wagon road, but that would be filled with snow, abandoned until springtime. Yet now it showed a flicker of light, the same yellow glow that shone on the undersides of the drifting vapor clouds rising from every chimney.
“Gods!” Rap said. “The whole town’s coming!” And Inos could hear the singing—there was an army fighting its way up the street, and probably another coming up the covered walks. She tried not to think of the dangers, of people being crushed. She had started a revolution and must pay the price, whatever it turned out to be.
Her teeth started to chatter.
“Sorry!” Rap murmured absentmindedly, and at once she was cozy warm all over, from ears to toes. He was still clad in only the simple pants and halfunbuttoned tunic he had worn indoors in Kinvale. His boots and shirt were thin, southern wear, his head was bare.
It was the postern that was bothering him. For eight months of the year the castle gates stood closed, drifted shut by thick snow. Only the little postern gate stayed open always, just wide enough for a man or a horse. An army could not pass through such a slot.
Rap stuck his head inside and peered around, then came out again. ”Evil-begotten nuisance, this shielding,” he mumbled. Again he studied the far side of the court. “If the raiders wake up in time and can get here to hold this door, then I’ll have to show my hand. I think I’d rather do it this way. Come on!”
He pulled her back along the snowy track a few paces. Even as he did so, she heard the gates creak. Slowly, noisily, and occultly, the two great flaps began to swing forward, crunching mountains of snow ahead of them. When they stood about halfway open, Rap released them.
“That should be enough,” he said. “I wonder if anyone will ever think to ask who opened the castle?” The noise of singing was louder now, the chimney smoke was glowing brightly overhead. A line of lights came into sight up the hill-men bearing torches, twenty or more abreast, floundering through the snow, cursing and stumbling. They were being propelled by the rank behind them as inexorably as Rap had moved the gates, and that rank by more behind it. The steaming mass advanced up the hill as irresistible as moving pack ice. Any man who fell was going to be trampled, but those first brave leaders were having the worst of it. The rest were finding easier going, and the singing came from them. Another mob suddenly erupted from Royal Wynd, a darker company against the snow, men without torches. They continued to pour into the courtyard, and now the main mass was at the top of the road.
“Come on!” Rap took Inos’s wrist again, and they ran before the advancing horde—through the barbican, past the guardroom door, into the bailey. Her father had fought a losing battle every winter to keep the bailey as clear of snow as was practical, but this year no one seemed to have tried very hard. She floundered through drifts as Rap pulled her over to the armory steps.
“Stand up here!” he said. He was not even panting; his stupid boots were probably full of snow. “Here they come—hold this!”
Somehow Inos found herself teetering on top of a wall and clutching a monstrous torch, hissing and spluttering, with leaping flames as long as her arms. It was so heavy she almost dropped it.
Before she could complain, the archway flickered and rumbled. With swords shining in the light of their torches, with their feet crunching on the hard-frozen snow, with voices raised in defiant song, the men of Krasnegar stormed into the bailey.
Inos felt her heart swell and tears prickle at her eyes. She had summoned her people, and they had rallied to their queen! Her speech was ready on the tip of her tongue as the vanguard reached her perch. She raised her flaming brand in a heroic gesture and cried out, “My loyal subjects—”
The army went right by her without an, upward glance. Nothing she could say was going to be heard anyway. Echoes boomed from the walls as the bailey filled up with roaring men, their leaders already past the kitchen quarters and the stables and the wagon sheds, advancing’ remorselessly on the Great Hall. More and more poured past Inos, the forgotten leader.
She peered around for Rap and found him below her, in the corner between the steps and the armory wall. He was doubled over, helpless with laughter. She could not recall ever having seen Rap laugh like that. She hurled her torch down at him in fury.
“Idiot! There are people being killed in there! Do something!”
He sprang up beside her as nimbly as a grasshopper. He had stopped laughing, but the old familiar half grin curled around the corners of his mouth. “You want me to call them back to listen to your harangue?”
“No—of course I was wrong! But let’s get in there!”
“Right,” he said cheerfully, and moved them both to the Throne Room. Shock!
It was a good vantage point. The revelers in the Great Hall had just awakened to their peril. There was shouting and confusion. The jotnar were pulling on helmets and sword belts—even clothes in some cases. The orchestra wailed into silence. Then the great doors crashed open and a foam of swords and smoking torches rolled into the hall, the crest of a tidal wave of men.
Inos hauled off her thick coat, discarding mitts and boots in the same flurry of movement. “Shoes!” she demanded.
“Just like that? How about some proper respect?” But Rap ensorceled shoes onto her feet. They pinched her toes.
The young jotnar were no cowards and as trained fighters they knew how to deal with a trap. Hastily forming a wedge, they charged the invasion, but they were too late to take the door. Servants, musicians, and girls all fled screaming from the developing battle, and the only place that offered even temporary shelter was the Throne Room. Behind them the Great Hall rang with clashing swords. Men howled curses and roared defiance. Tables and benches went over, dishes rolled and smashed; bodies were falling on top of them.
The first naked girl to arrive was Uki, the miller’s youngest. Inos threw her coat to her and scrambled up on a chair, raising her arms in welcome to the rest. The panicking mob stumbled to a halt, staring in disbelief.
Voices cried, “Inos!” and “The princess!”
“I am your queen, and Krasnegar is liberated!” Their replies were hardly audible over the hubbub of battle out in the hall. Inos waved an arm at the door to the stairs. “The room above here is warm!” she yelled, hoping Rap would take the hint. “Women upstairs!” The closer girls heard her and raced that way. The rest followed, piling up in the entrance in a squirming mass of bare flesh. The men, including Rap, watched the performance with interest.