The drug Velmont had given him was still at work in his blood, however. His leap was more of a lopsided hop, and when his fingers latched onto the side of the house, he was barely able to cling to it without falling.
Looking back, he saw his pursuers were only seconds away. “Hold, damn you,” he grunted at his own hands. They’d never failed him before. He managed to swing one arm up and grab the ledge of a second story window. Cramps ran up both his ankles and made him gasp for breath. When the muscles there relaxed again, he swung his right leg up to get purchase on the top of the door frame.
“Lord Mayor!” someone shouted below. “Please-your people need you! We need you at the Godstone!”
“He’s slaughtered this crew,” someone else said in a hollow voice. A woman screamed. “They were Sadu’s ministers-what has he done?”
“Please,” a third voice shouted. “Think of us! Think of our safety!”
Malden didn’t have the breath to waste on a reply. Pain wracked his arms but he managed to pull himself up onto the shingles of the house’s roof. He lay there gasping for a moment, staring up at the sky, while the entreaties continued from below.
The sky was a peculiar shade of purple. He turned his head and saw orange clouds on the horizon. No, it can’t come so soon. But he could not deny the evidence of his senses. Dawn was about to break.
He had to get to Ryewall as quickly as possible, to lead the counterattack.
He rolled over onto his side, then painfully rose to his feet. He was halfway across the city and could barely trust his legs. What if he had a cramp in the middle of leaping from one rooftop to another?
There wasn’t anything he could do about that, though. He would have to take his chances.
Moving as quickly as he dared on feet still half numb, Malden scurried over a roof ridge and down the other side. The street beyond was blessedly narrow, and he managed to hurl himself across and roll along the shingles on the far side. Bits of wood, brittle from the cold, broke away underneath him and pattered down into the road, but he managed to get his footing. Ahead of him lay a long row of rooftops, the houses all attached to one another. He kept low as he ran from eave to eave, even as cries went up all around him.
“His blood! He demands His blood!” they shouted.
Malden scowled but kept running. There was no time to convince the people of Ness that he was worth more to them now alive than dead.
Up ahead lay a broad street-Crispfat Lane, where a dozen butchers had their shops. The gap between the rooftops was too wide to jump, even if he’d been in a condition to do so. He ran to the edge and looked down.
The snowy street was almost deserted-but not quite enough. He saw women holding candles peering into every alley, every alcove. No doubt looking for the appointed sacrifice of their god. The priests must have put out a general hue and cry to find him. The damn fools didn’t seem to understand that every able-bodied citizen of Ness was needed to repel the invaders-these women looked strong enough to hold polearms.
There was nothing for it. He would have to scramble down into the street and up the houses on the far side. If the searchers tried to stop him, he would have to fight them off. He hurried down a gutter pipe as quietly as he could, praying the dark of night would be his ally as it had so many times before.
Halfway down a searing pain burst through his stomach and his hands turned to spasmodic claws. He lost his grip as he screamed in agony and fell the last ten feet into a snowdrift. For a while he could do nothing but curl around his midsection and blink sweat out of his eyes.
The pain felt like it would never let him go. He could not move, could not even think as the agony wracked his body. It was all he could do to keep breathing. As the snow melted on his face and hands, paining him still further, he tried to force it away, tried to unclench his closed eyelids.
Eventually it worked.
When he looked up, a small crowd had gathered to peer down at him by candlelight. “Lord Mayor,” one woman said, “you’ve come to your senses. If you’ll just come along with us now. We want no trouble.”
Malden rose carefully, the pain in his stomach still making it impossible for him to stand up straight. He reached for Acidtongue’s hilt with a hand that barely obeyed his command.
It would have gotten ugly just then if Slag hadn’t come tearing down the street, screaming, “Make way! Make way or get fucking crushed, you pissants!”
Chapter One Hundred Thirteen
The crowd of devout citizens gasped and ran as a massive wagon covered by a tarpaulin came rumbling down the hill toward them. A dozen men were pushing against it from the front, trying to slow its headlong descent and mostly failing.
Running ahead of the wagon, Slag carried a long brass staff topped by a hook that looked like the head of a snake. Meanwhile, sitting atop the wagon’s burden, Balint waved a cloth back and forth, cheering and shouting curses.
“You’ll all be flatter than a spinster’s tit if you don’t scarper right now!” she cackled. She looked like she’d never had more fun in her life.
“I am well pleased to see you,” Malden said as Slag hurried toward him. “I take it this is your secret project.”
“It’ll be the world’s most expensive heap of scrap if we take this hill too fast, lad,” Slag explained. “Help us!”
Malden hurried toward the wagon. He recognized the men straining against it as workers from Slag’s shop. Some had burned faces and hands wrapped in bandages, but they seemed less concerned with their own hurts than with slowing the progress of the wagon. Malden put his own shoulder against the wagon’s boards and was shocked to feel how heavy its cargo must be. “What is this made of, Slag? Twice-refined lead?”
“Bronze, mostly. Put your fucking back in it, boys!”
They heaved and struggled and strained. The wagon roared as it rolled over the cobbles. The wheels screamed and the axles spat sparks. Somehow they managed to avoid crashing at the bottom of the hill. It was far easier moving it through the relatively level streets beyond, even with no dray animals. Slag suddenly called a halt, and Malden looked up for the first time.
Directly before him was Ryewall.
High above, his thieves and whores were busy taking random shots at targets on the other side. Loophole and ’Levenfingers moved along the ramparts of Westwall and Swampwall, shouting orders like they were born serjeants, calling out targets. When Loophole saw Malden, he gave a cheery wave-even as a barbarian arrow shot past his ear, inches from skewering his head.
“It’s begun, lad,” the oldster called down. “You’d best join me up here.”
Malden grabbed Slag’s shoulder-the one still attached to an arm. “Are you ready?” he asked.
“As close as I fucking can be,” the dwarf told him.
Malden glanced at Balint. “She gave you no trouble?”
A twitching smile passed across Slag’s face as he tried to maintain a sober countenance. “Oh, she distracted me a bit from what I was doing. But after the-well, after some initial, ah, fractiousness, we, ah, we got along right well. She had some excellent ideas, actually, about brisance and containment.” He glanced away from Malden’s feet. “Very imaginative lass, our Balint.”
Malden laughed and slapped the dwarf on the back. “What exactly should I expect from this thing?” he asked, changing the subject. “Are you going to shoot a giant arrow at the barbarians, or will it throw a flaming rock like a catapult?”
“Neither. It’ll either explode when I set it off, and make a much bigger bang than we did at the cloisters, or, it will actually work. In which case-” Slag’s face grew dark with evil excitement. “-it’ll put the fear of fucking dwarves into those stinking cocksuckers.”
“Do your worst, when I give the signal,” Malden said. Then he hurried up the steep, narrow stairs that led to the top of Westwall.