“How did you come here, lieutenant?” he demanded.
Cort gave him the condensed version, and Devers’s face swelled darker and darker as he heard how two strangers had fought beside his men, enlisted in the Blue Company, and been chased for days by the Hawks, then taken shelter in Quilichen.
“Sergeant Otto told me some of this when he met me on the road,” he told Cort, “but I hadn’t known you had taken sanctuary in Quilichen again. There can be no question of our fighting against your hosts. Come back to our camp now.”
“By your leave, captain,” Cort said, bracing himself, “I’m honorbound to help defend the city that has saved me.”
“Of course you are, and so am I! The company shall march to resign the contract with the Boss of Knockenburg, and pay back the moneys he has advanced us—but bid your folk be ready to open their gates, for we may have to fight our way to you, and be in need of shelter quickly!”
“Captain, I thank you with all my heart,” Cort said fervently.
Devers shrugged impatiently. “The soldier is loyal to the company, and the company is loyal to the soldier. No mercenary band can hold together otherwise. Go ask your hosts for hospitality for more guests.”
No one tried to stop the Blue Company from entering the city, though—the sight of all those men marching in perfect formation to confront the Boss of Knockenburg seemed to give them second thoughts. They were almost to the city wall before the boss gave the order to charge. Devers relied on Magda and ordered his men to run, telling only the archers at the rear to fight. Two flights of arrows gave the Boss’s army second thoughts; they veered aside as the gates opened and the Blue Company went pelting in.
The Hawk Company, though, was more alert than the boss; when the gate opened, the brown-coated soldiers charged with a roar. Improbable though it seemed, one flying squad made it to the gate before it closed. They shot the porters, then hauled the great doors open. The rest of the company came thundering up, but a flight of arrows from the wall slowed them, while Gar and Cort came bellowing out with a score of Blue soldiers behind them, to knock the Hawks away from the gates. Arrows from the wall pierced the men. They fell howling, and the gates closed again, leaving the Hawk cavalry no choice but to swerve aside, cursing. Arrows stitched a dead-line across the roadway, and the infantry fell back, seeing no purpose in risking their lives to reach closed, guarded doors.
Cort brought his captain up to the wall to meet Magda. Devers bowed over her hand. “My lady! My deepest thanks for having sheltered my men!”
“It was our privilege, captain,” she said. “May we hire the Blue Company now?”
“You may not, lady! We are already in your debt, and will pay it with blood and steel instead of gold!”
“You are too generous.” Magda had to blink a few times before she could go on. “How did you come here?”
“We were hired by Knockenburg,” Devers told her. “The boss told me that the Boss of Loutre had allied with him and persuaded both himself and Scurrilein to bring down Quilichen, because he felt that all merchants, and therefore all free towns, were growing too strong, and would eventually corrupt all the bosstowns with their notions of freedom and prosperity for all.”
Magda stared. “Wherever would the Boss of Loutre have garnered such an idea?”
“From his steward,” Gar said grimly. “Torgi wouldn’t care what arguments he used, so long as he maneuvered his boss into marching. He’s seen that the Hawk Company alone can’t kill me, especially not while I have your protection, my lady, so he has stirred up a war to destroy Quilichen, all to make sure I won’t tell his boss what he’s been doing.” He turned to Magda, bowing. “My lady, once again I offer…”
“No!” she snapped. “When we say we have given you shelter, we stand by our word! So, captain, the bosses have decided to attack the free towns and conquer them before we grow any stronger, and they mean to begin with Quilichen. Is there no thought that they will abandon this madness even if Quilichen falls, or do they truly mean to destroy all?”
“I fear they will finish what they’ve begun,” Devers said heavily. “No matter where the idea came from or why, once it’s born and about, it won’t die, but will grow.”
“So all the free towns will be destroyed, just for one steward’s vendetta,” Dirk said bitterly.
“Can this steward Torgi really have stirred up a campaign against all the free towns just to rid himself of the evidence against him?” Cort asked in disbelief.
“He certainly can,” Gar said grimly.
Magda asked Devers, “How much chance have we of holding against them?”
“Two Free Companies, with the weight of three bosses’ forces behind them?” Devers looked out over the field, his face grim. “Your walls are stout, my lady, and your archers skilled and brave. With my men beside them, we have a chance—but I cannot say how strong that chance may be.”
“Will nothing turn them aside?”
“We can always parley,” Gar said.
Devers shook his head. “It will do no good.”
“Perhaps not,” Gar said, “but it will do no harm, either-and it will, at least, postpone their first attack.”
So the trumpets sounded, the gates opened, and Gar rode out under a white flag—with Cort and Dirk beside him to make sure he didn’t try to give himself up. But they were scarcely clear of the gates when a trumpet blew, men roared, and the Boss of Knockenburg charged them with all his men, while the Hawk Company came riding from the left, along the wall, and the Bear Company came riding from the right. They had chosen their moment well—the porters had to keep the gates open until their men were back inside. The archers laid a row of arrows in front of the boss’s men, and they shied, enough so their brutes had to roar and rant to make them start again. That bought enough time for the parley party to turn back—but the cavalry companies were another matter. The archers shot down at them, but they were so close to the wall that the arrows couldn’t reach them. Archers fired their next volley straight down through the slots in the battlements that were usually reserved for boiling oil, but they weren’t big enough for good aim, and only a few soldiers fell from their horses. The others thundered closer, nearly to the gate …
A hundred trumpets blasted, and lances of light stabbed the foremost riders on each side of the gate. They fell, and their horses reared and turned as thunder cracked all about them, deafening in its intensity. The light-lances stabbed again, scoring the walls, and all the riders pulled up, crying out in fear. Then a huge voice bellowed over the whole plain, “Now I say hold!”
All the fighting men froze, looking about them, then up to the hilltop where the Fair Folk stood, tall and severe, cloaks whipping in the wind, cowls deep to shield them from the sun, huge dark blisters where their eyes should be, making them seem half-human and half-insect. Only Dirk and Gar recognized those blisters as sun goggles.
There were a hundred of them at least.
“We hold all the heights!” the duke’s voice thundered. “Look about you! If any disobeys the Fair Folk, he shall die on a lance of lightning!”
To emphasize the point, a lance from the east hissed through the pole holding the Boss of Loutre’s standard. It fell, and the assembled soldiers raised a torrent of talk. Some turned to run, but laser-bolts burned the grass at the back of their armies, and they froze in fear. Finally they looked around, and saw more Fair Folk darkening the summits of the hills to every side.
“Where did he get them all?” Dirk wondered, amazed.