The chief architect sighed gustily. "You think they'll try to slip in unnoticed. You need me to tell you where."
"We need you to tell us how we can lure them to a particular place."
"Ah," said Abraham Han Li. He reached toward the rack of scrolls beside his bed and drew out one, then after a moment's hesitation, a second. He tucked them under his arm. "Lead," he said.
They did not wait long before they heard the soft scraping at the door. Moishe opened it carefully. Chen slipped through it, then the larger, bulkier shape of the lord commander. Ogadai, like the chief architect, was awake, alert, and looked as if he had not been asleep when Chen found him. Somewhat surprising, but most welcome, was the one who came in last: Buri the engineer, brightest-eyed of any, and visibly curious.
Chen looked like a cat in cream. Moishe would praise him for his initiative-later, when there was time for such amenities.
Abraham Han Li looked up from the plans that he had been examining, blinking at the newcomers. "This is where you want to go," he said, pointing with a long-nailed finger, "and this is where you should begin."
Ogadai leaned over his shoulder, with Buri close behind. Moishe had already seen; he had no arguments, though he had no few doubts. He had been living with them for too long; he could not believe that he was right after all.
Ogadai looked long at the course that Abraham Han Li showed him. Then he grunted. "We can't match their numbers-too much chance of giving the game away. It will have to be an ambush."
"Then you need to go here," said Buri, glancing at Abraham Han Li for permission. A glance granted it. Buri pointed to a slightly different place than the architect had.
"But," Moishe said, "that's-"
His master's cold eye quelled the rest of it. "Yes, it is. It makes a great deal of sense-though it tears my liver to say so." He turned to Ogadai. "You'll need to get your troops in place soon, and as secretly as you can."
"They'll be in by morning," said Ogadai, "if you'll give us a guide who knows the ways."
Moishe did not wait for them to turn to him. He said, "I'll go. I can still shoot-I hunt when I can. Can you spare me a bow and a quiver?"
Ogadai bent his head. "We'll get you a mail-coat, too. Best you come with me. I may need you to make this clear to the men."
"I'll go with you when you do it," Buri said: "I built some of those ways. But I need to run another errand first. Swear you'll wait for me."
"We'll wait," Ogadai said before Moishe could take it on himself.
"Go," Abraham Han Li said. "All of you. What I have to do here, I can do myself."
For once Moishe did as he was told. No one knew better how little time there was to waste.
The caverns were the same by night as by day-perpetual darkness, and no light but what men brought into it. The shifts of workers were gone; they had finished shoring this weakest part and gone on to another, more distant and less vulnerable. Part of Buri's errand had been to see to it that none of them came back to explore or investigate. They were well and safely out of the way.
Moishe shifted in his coat of borrowed mail. It had been too long since he wore such a thing; it was heavy, dragging at his shoulders. On either side of him, Ogadai's picked men waited with soldiers' patience. Every second man was asleep, watched over by the man on his right hand. When this watch was over, the sleepers would wake and the watchers sleep. And if the enemy came-if it was not a delusion-they would all be up, wide awake, and ready to fight.
Ogadai was on Moishe's left hand, a breathing warmth in the gloom. There were lamps in the cavern, spaced far apart, to guide workmen in and out. They were not enough to read by and they cast deep shadows, but they struck random parts of the cave into sharp relief. From where Moishe sat, he could see the liquid flow of a column and the rough wood of the brace beside it, holding up that portion of the roof. Beyond it was the dark gleam of the underground river.
Ogadai's men were invisible in the shadows, spread with care around the inner edge of the cavern. Moishe had a sudden craving for open air-to be with Chen and another, smaller company, luring the invaders toward this place, or even to be with Buri and a certain very important company at the other end of the great cavern. But he had to be here; he was the soldiers' guide.
Chen would bring them. If, as Ogadai suspected, they were relying on someone from inside the Temple for guidance, Chen would discover who it was. He would make sure that they came here rather than through one of a number of more obvious but less useful entrances.
It was difficult to wait. The gloom was oppressive. One of the men nearest Moishe seemed to have been overindulging in either onions or garlic or both. Moishe was light-headed from trying not to breathe the stink.
Without sun or stars, there was no way to tell the passage of time. Counting breaths grew tedious. Ogadai's lieutenant had an hourglass, which he guarded jealously. By it they reckoned the turn of the watches.
Ogadai had waked twice and Moishe pretended to sleep twice. Shortly after Moishe's second waking, something set his hackles to bristling. He had felt it before he heard it: the softest possible scrape and a muted, barely perceptible thud.
Ogadai had not moved, but his eyes were open, glittering in the faint lamplight.
Very, very softly, he rose. Others followed suit, perceptible as shifts in the air. Moishe had his bow in his hand and strung, with no memory of having done it.
Barak led them-of course. He had shed his pretense of scholarly mildness and showed himself here for what he was: a soldier and commander, keen and deadly strong. Chen at first was nowhere to be seen-then Moishe saw the small bound figure stumbling between two tall westerners. He was alive and moving; that had to be enough, for the moment.
It had been a long while since Moishe went to battle. It was almost alarming to realize how well he remembered everything: the piercing alertness, the narrow border between terror and exaltation, the slowing of time to an endless, leisurely moment.
The invaders kept close ranks as they entered the cavern. They had scouts somewhat ahead, and a rearguard somewhat behind. The bulk of them moved as one, silent and sharply alert. But they had not marked the men now behind them in the darkness, nor seemed aware of any ahead.
All of the invaders were in the cavern before Ogadai gave the signaclass="underline" a click of the tongue that sounded as loud as a shout in the silence. Well before the echoes died, Moishe had nocked arrow to string and loosed, just as the rest of the archers did the same. Hard on the hail of arrow-fire came a rank of men shrilling war-cries, swarming down from the niches and galleries upon the enemy.
A hand tugged at Moishe's sleeve. He loosed one last arrow into the gloom, slung the bow and scrambled behind the rest of the archers. He could not look back for fear he would fall, but he knew the plan as well as anyone could. The spearmen and swordsmen were driving the enemy into the center of the cavern, covering for the archers' retreat and the other, much more deadly activity near the entrance.
Moishe stopped short. There was no one behind him, to crash into him-and that was fortunate. He slipped and slid and scrambled down to the cave's floor, in among the fighting, with nothing but a bow, an empty quiver, and a knife meant originally to cut meat and leather on the march.
He was not thinking at all. He knew where Chen was-not too far from the front, and still surrounded by guards. They were big even for westerners. He darted in among them. They were slow and clumsy in his state of heightened awareness; he eluded them with effortless ease. He caught hold of the rope that bound Chen.