"Good." The prelate scowled. "As good as it can be, anyhow. Good would be having the barbarians beyond the walls where they belong."
Ingegerd opened the panel in the door again and looked out. "No horsemen, not this minute," she said. "Bodies in the street that were not there when you knocked . . . Come on." She unbarred the door and went outside.
Thick, choking smoke already fouled the air. How many fires had the Khamorth set? How fast were they spreading? Too many and too fast—those were the only answers that mattered to Rhavas. He needed a moment to orient himself, then swung toward the south. "The closest gate, yes?"
She nodded. "Yes. What else can we do?"
"Nothing." Rhavas was far from sure even fleeing would help, but it was the only hope they had.
He hadn't gone far before he thrust the sword Ingegerd had given him into his belt and went to work with the shovel—not against the Khamorth, but against drifted snow that blocked their way. Shovelful after shovelful flew. In other times, it would have been great sport: either that, or it quickly would have worn Rhavas out. Now it was only one more thing he had to do.
He fought through the drift, and he and Ingegerd went on. The way was easier for a little while—others fleeing ahead of them had partly cleared it. But that meant it was easier for the Khamorth, too. A bearded barbarian on foot came out of a house. He dropped the silver candlesticks he'd been holding and ran toward Rhavas, swinging back his sword for a killing stroke.
The prelate had no chance to drop the shovel and draw his—Himerios'—blade. He'd won once with his unorthodox weapon. Maybe he could again. But the Khamorth was dreadfully close and looked dreadfully fierce—and then looked dreadfully surprised as a fat snowball caught him full in the face. He coughed and sputtered and brought up a mittened hand to get snow out of his eyes and nose.
Rhavas hit him in the face, too, but with the iron blade of the shovel. The nomad roared in pain. Blood spurted from his broken nose and from a great gash on his cheek. It spattered the snow, horribly red. Rhavas hit him again, this time in the side of the head. He crumpled, sword falling from nerveless fingers.
"Well done!" Ingegerd said from behind the prelate.
Rhavas' heart thudded. "I thought I was a dead man," he said. "Phos bless you for your quick wit—and for your strong arm."
"That was . . . not so much," Ingegerd answered. "Halogai know what there is to know about snowballs and the throwing of them. I only wish I had been able to put a rock in the heart of that one."
"Even without, it did what it needed to do," Rhavas said. Ingegerd nodded. They pressed on.
They had to turn back from one street. Fire had got there ahead of them. Flames and black smoke billowed up, blocking the way. Through the clouds of smoke, Rhavas got brief glimpses of bodies sprawled in the snow. They all looked Videssian. He sketched the sun-sign, wishing them a safe journey over the Bridge of the Separator to a happy, joyous afterlife beyond.
When Rhavas and Ingegerd turned south again, they came up to a temple the plainsmen were plundering. Three blue-robed priests lay outside in pools of blood. Rhavas sketched the sun-sign again. "They dare!" he whispered in outrage and shock that seemed ridiculous in retrospect—of course the barbarians dared. But knowing of it and seeing it proved two different things. "They dare to rob the house of the lord with the great and good mind!"
"To them, it is but a store of gold and jewels," Ingegerd said.
She was right, of course. A laughing Khamorth carried an icon of Phos out of the temple—not for its beauty but for its gold leaf. Maybe he thought it was gold all the way through, though the weight should have given that away. Other nomads brought away better spoils.
"Quick," Ingegerd hissed. "Past them while they care more for booty than for blood."
She was also right about that. The Khamorth were happy with what they'd taken, and briefly sated. They let the prelate and the woman get past them without more than a glance. A few doors down, other barbarians had broken into a tavern. Wine and beer delighted them as much as gold had pleased their fellows at the temple.
What Rhavas dreaded was half a dozen of them coming after him and Ingegerd at once. Even if he beat back the first couple of attackers, it would only enrage the rest—and he could not afford to lose at all. Ingegerd, perhaps, could afford it even less than he could, for the Khamorth were more likely to kill him cleanly.
She might have plucked that thought from his mind. "Do not fret," she said as they hurried past the tavern. "They will have no sport over me. I know how to draw the blade across my own neck if fortune fails us."
"May the good god prevent it," Rhavas muttered.
"Yes, may he indeed," Ingegerd answered calmly. "But in case he does not, I can look after myself."
That should have bordered on blasphemy: how could mortals presume to set their will against Phos'? And suicide normally sent someone falling from the Bridge of the Separator down to the eternal ice. Suicide under such circumstances, though . . . Rhavas could not find it in himself to condemn such a thing, and could not believe the lord with the great and good mind did, either.
"Quickly," the prelate said as they went past the tavern. "If they notice you are a woman . . . things become more difficult." And anyone who would not notice that Ingegerd was a woman was not paying attention.
But Rhavas got her round a corner before a startled shout rang out from the direction of the tavern. The barbarians had been too intent on the drink they'd found to think of other pleasures right away. "Here, let me lead," Ingegerd said then. "I think I can lose them in the maze of streets."
"Go ahead, then," Rhavas said. "Try not to use any ways where the snow has not been trodden, or they will trail us the more easily."
She nodded. "A thought of weight . . . Down here now." She turned left. "Now through this alley." Only a few people had gone through it; she and Rhavas did their best to step in the tracks that were already there. She pointed to the right. "Now that way—and we should be close to the gate."
The next interesting question was whether they would be able to get out. Were the gates open? Did plainsmen swarm around them? Even if he and Ingegerd could escape Skopentzana, what then? Could they make their way across country to the closest village, or even to the closest farmhouse? How could they keep from leaving a trail wherever they went?
That wasn't one interesting question—it was more like half a dozen. Unless they could find answers to all of them, they would find answers to other questions, the ones of the sort where no one who learned them was in any position to pass them on to anyone else.
The gates were open. Rhavas breathed out a sigh of relief and a young fog bank to go with it. He and Ingegerd weren't the first ones to flee this way. He saw no great swarm of plainsmen, either. The Khamorth were having better sport inside Skopentzana than they would have had outside the city. Odds were they thought they could hunt down escapees at their leisure. Odds were they were right, too, but Rhavas refused to dwell on that.
"Out!" he said to Ingegerd.
"Out!" she echoed. They both ran for the gate. They ran out through it. Once beyond bowshot from the walls, they paused for a moment, panting. If anything was more exhausting than running through snow, Rhavas could not imagine what it might be.
He turned back toward Skopentzana and shook his fist at the strong stone walls and at the barbarians inside them. "My curses on the Khamorth!" he shouted. "May they suffer what they have made others suffer! May they die as they have made innocent Videssians die! May they burn as they have made Skopentzana burn! And may pestilence destroy any of the murderers my other curses do not overtake!" He spat in the snow.