crisis arrived, then he was at his best.
As was the case now. Rejoining the main body of
his army, he called his staff together and issued orders
firmly. In a new, bold voice, the Dark King
commanded them to abandon the siege that they had
scarcely yet begun. Once more he set his whole vast
host in motion, turning it to meet the Silver Queen and
Soulcutter.
Vulcan’s turn would come, and soon. There were
still certain weapons to which even a god armed with
the Sword of Force would not be immune, the tools of
boldness and intelligence. Meanwhile, for the time
being, Vilkata would abandon the city of Tashigang to
the gods.
CHAPTER 17
In the hour before dawn, at a time when two
hundred of the loyal defenders of Tashigang were
fighting outside the walls, there was treachery in the
Lord Mayor’s palace. Money changed hands, and
weapons flashed, in a corridor on an upper floor,
where one room had been made into a cell for holding
an important prisoner. Chairman and High Priest
Hyrcanus of the Blue Temple was freed, in steps of
bribery and violence.
The move to rescue Hyrcanus was planned and
executed by his immediate subordinates in the Blue
Temple, as part of a general insurrection, in
accordance with the High Priest’s own previous
orders. The intention was to seize control of the city,
and welcome in the Dark King and his army.
Attempts by the Blue Temple Guard to seize the
walls and gates from inside were unsuccessful. The
concurrent try to assassinate the Lord Mayor failed
also, nor were the Blue Temple raiders able to
capture the palace-not all of the Watch there were
easily subverted or taken by surprise. And Hyrcanus
was wounded in his escape, so that he had to be half
carried, gasping and ashen-faced, back to the Blue
Temple’s local headquarters on a street not far away.
Once there, propped up on a couch while a sur-
geon worked on him, the Chairman demanded to be
brought up to date on how the situation stood,
inside the city and out. When his aides had
informed him as best they could, one of his first
orders was to dispatch a company of thirty Blue
Temple Guardsmen against the House of Court-
enay.Their orders were to take or destroy the build-
ing, and seize whatever Swords and other useful
items they could discover-along with any availa-
ble gold and other valuables, of course. They were
also to take the important inhabitants of the house
prisoner if possible, or kill them as second choice;
and in general to crush that place as a possible cen-
ter of resistance. –
Then Hyrcanus began to lay his plans to attack the
walls and gates once more.
When the first Blue Temple raid struck the palace,
in the hour before dawn, Baron Amintor was waiting
in a ground floor room for a good chance to see the
Mayor privately. When the Baron saw the Guard in
its capes of blue and gold come swirling in to the
attack, he immediately decided that he could best
serve his Queen’s interests and his own by remaining
alive and active in the city, whatever the outcome of
this particular skirmish might prove to be. The fate of
the palace and the Mayor still hung in the balance
when Amintor prudently retired, and set out through
the streets to carry warning to the
House of Courtenay. He of course remembered that
that was where the young man named Denis lived,
who was supposed to be able to set a counterattack
of looters in motion against the Blue Temple.
When the Baron reached his destination-not without
a minor adventure or two along the way-he found the
House already on the alert, its doors and windows
sealed. It took him some time and effort, arguing and
cajoling, to get himself admitted to speak with
someone in authority.
Once inside, he found himself face to face with the
tiny woman who had been introduced to him at the
palace as the Lady Sophie. Now, surrounded by her
own determined-looking retainers, she received his
warning with evident suspicion, which he in turn
accepted philosophically.
“I can only suggest, Madam, that you wait and see
if I am right. Wait not in idleness, of course; order
your affairs as if the Blue Temple were indeed
leading a revolt. I will await the result with
confidence.”
“You will await the result in a room by yourself.
Jord, Tamir, disarm him and lock him in that closet.”
The Baron’s capacity for philosophical acceptance
became somewhat strained; but at the moment he had
no real choice.
The attack by the Blue Temple against the house
began presently, just as the Baron had predicted, with
fire and sword and axe against the walls and doors
and windows. But the attackers met fierce resistance
from the start. Brickbats and scalding water were
dumped on them from the flat roof, and the first
window that they managed to break open
immediately sprouted weapons, like teeth in a
warbeast’s mouth.
Denis was not there to aid in the defense. Barbara
had taken the Baron’s warning seriously, enough to
dispatch the young man with orders to put into
operation whatever looting counterattack he could.
The street connections made in his early life ought to
serve him well in the attempt.
And even a feint, or the suggestion of an attack,
might serve as well as the real thing. In a city this big,
the Blue Temple vaults must hold vast treasure; and
Denis had already begun to spread among the city’s
street people the rumor that the Blue Temple’s main
hoard, an agglomeration of wealth well beyond the
capacity of most people to comprehend, had already
been moved into Tashigang for safekeeping. It was
unlikely that even a large mob could succeed in looting
the Temple here, but even the threat ought to make
the misers squirm and roar, and pull in their claws to
defend that which they valued more than their own
lives and limbs.
As the direct attack on her own house began,
Barbara’s first act was to see to it that her daughter,
with Kuan-yin as caretaker and Jord as personal
bodyguard, was put into the safest and strongest room
available.
Then Barbara ran upstairs to get Townsaver. If this
warning and attack were only part of an elaborate
hoax to discover where it was hidden, the Baron was
safely locked up now, and would never see. A few
days ago the Lord Mayor, perhaps trusting the
security of this house as much or more than that of his
own palace, had asked Master and Lady Courtenay to
keep it here.
She was still climbing stairs when a great crash
from below told her that a door had somehow
already been broken in. Smoke and the cries and
clash of battle rose from below, as Barbara knelt to
bring the great Sword out of its hiding place under
her bedroom floor.
Fighting nearby, threatening innocent noncom-
batants in their home, had wakened the Sword of
Fury already. The weighty steel arose with magical
ease and lightness in her grip, the Sword already
making its preliminary faint millsaw whine. For a
moment as she held it, there crossed Barbara’s
mind the thought of Mark’s hands, a small boy’s
hands then, the first time he had held this Sword,
his grip no stronger then perhaps than hers was
now upon this very hilt . . . she was already hur-
rying back toward the stairs.
From below there sounded a new crash, a shout of
triumph in the invaders’ voices.
Their joy would be short lived. In Barbara’s
hands, Townsaver screamed exultantly, and pulled
her running down the stairs.
. CHAPTER 18
Ben, caught in Vilkata’s camp when the retreat
turned into a desperate scramble for survival,
bulled his way into the fighting at the mouth of the
no-longer-secret tunnel. But it was quickly obvious
that the tunnel was now hopelessly blocked as a
means of escape. Having no other real choice, he
promptly committed himself to the river instead.
Many other bodies, alive and dead, were afloat in
the Corgo already. All of them, swimming or
bobbing, would eventually reach one or another of
the great water-gates that pierced the city’s walls
only a few hundred meters downstream.
Ben splashed and waded and swam his way well
out into the current, trying to avoid the hail of mis-
siles, slung stones and arrows, now being launched
by enemy troops along the bank. The steadily
growing lightness of the eastern sky brightened the
water as well. The enemy certainly had the tunnel
now. Not that it was going to do them any good as
an invasion route; it had been designed for com-
plete and easy blockage at the point where it
approached the walls, and also at the inner end,
almost below the palace.
The bottom fell off steeply under Ben as he moved