A man sitting a horse. Very far away. Too far away to be the source of the noise he’d heard. So there were more than one of them out there.
He hurried back to the camp and kicked out the fire. Bethane had taken shelter under an overhanging rock. The rock hung so close to the ground she’d had to cram herself inside. Croy shoved himself in after her, his greater bulk making it difficult. He ignored the way the rock scraped at his back and shoulders and squeezed himself inside.
In the last embers of the fire he saw Bethane’s eyes, and the fear there. It seemed she was still capable of feeling something, then, if only terror. He placed a finger to his lips, and she nodded in response.
He heard no more sounds that night. Whoever had come looking for them in the dark didn’t find them-or didn’t think the game worth dragging them out of the rock. Croy spent every moment of the night watching anyway, watching and listening, his ears straining to pick up the slightest noise.
Eventually gray light streamed along the world outside their hiding place and dawn lightened the sky.
Though they had slept not at all and Croy’s body had become as solid as the stone around him, he managed to haul himself out of the crevice and then pull Bethane out after him. They had nothing with which to break their fast, so they just started walking again.
Less than an hour later Croy saw the rider once more. This time he made no attempt to conceal himself-standing at the top of a hill, he was hard to miss. The other pursuers, however, were harder to find, though he could hear them moving through the trees.
They could be hillmen, the notorious savages of these untamed rocks. They could be bandits or deserters or highwaymen from Skrae. They could be barbarians. Croy had no way to tell.
Bethane looked at him with eyes she kept barely under control.
He nodded, and pointed at the trail ahead of them. She kept walking.
He drew Ghostcutter from its sheath and held it close to his leg. His one comfort just then was that he knew exactly what to do. If the rider’s men attacked, he would try to fight them off. If there were too many of them, though…
For one of royal blood like Bethane, there were fates worse than death. He could not let her be captured. If it came to that, if honor left him no other choice He thought he could do it.
Cythera, he prayed, for he could think of no words the Lady would like to hear. Cythera, forgive all my sins. Remember me fondly. I did my best.
Chapter Eighty-Eight
The whispers became murmurs. The murmurs became disgusted looks in the midst of the camp. Morget said nothing, but made certain every man of the horde knew he was willing to listen.
And still, no word came from inside the walls of Ness.
A warrior came to him from one of the lesser clans, a weakling of a man who should have been weeded out long ago. His name was Horfnung, and he was known far and wide for being a thrall to his wife. Still, he had the courage to speak to Morget, man-to-man. Morget led him inside his tent and together they sat on stools and shared the warmth of his charcoal stove. “The snow lies on the ground today, and does not melt,” Horfnung said.
“I saw it,” Morget told him. He wanted to smack the man with the backside of his hand for wasting his time, but instead he nodded sagely, as if this were some grand observation.
“This morning I went to make water, and by the time I was done, my piss had frozen on the ground,” Horfnung went on.
If the man did not get to his point soon, he would gut him.
“Every day we throw rocks over this wall, like bad neighbors throwing garbage over a fence,” the little man said. “Inside the city, they sleep in warm beds, and enjoy their women. I want a bed.” Horfnung smiled, as men do who are about to make a joke they think hilarious. “I want to enjoy their women.”
“Morg, my father-ah, and chieftain of us all,” Morget said, very slowly, “has decreed the city must not be harmed. So we can enjoy it more when it is ours.”
“Every day he tells us this. And nothing changes. Meanwhile, an army camps not thirty miles away. An army we could walk over with bare feet. Morg, your father, leaves them in peace.”
“Such is his decision. Some, in the past,” Morget said, “have called him Morg the Wise.”
“Some now call him Morg the Merciful,” Horfnung said, spitting out the insult.
Morget nodded sagely again. “Who do you speak for?” he asked.
“Only myself,” Horfnung admitted.
“Ah. Very good. I am glad to offer you the hospitality of my tent,” he said, and stood up. Horfnung was smart enough, at least, to rise as well, and take his leave.
At the flap of the tent, however, Horfnung stopped a moment. “There are many others who would say the same things.”
“Let them come to me and speak, for there is no harm in it. Now-get out of my tent. You’re letting in the cold,” Morget said, and took a step toward the flap.
Horfnung all but ran away.
“Spittle of a man,” Morget cursed when he was gone.
Balint raised her head from where she lay on a pile of furs in the corner. “That almost sounded like a real insult,” she said. “You must be learning from me.”
Morget snarled. “I would wipe my arse with his kind if-”
“If you didn’t need their support,” the dwarf said. “Aye, barbarian, you can’t do this thing alone. If you’re still committed to doing it at all. You need to make up your mind, you know. A man sitting on a fence too long gets a post up his backside.”
But Morget had already decided. Horfnung had spoken true when he’d said many others thought the same as he. Morget had heard similar veiled threats from a hundred men already, and knew there would be no question when he made his move. Morg’s plan for taking the city wasn’t working fast enough. The barbarians were not famous for their patience. “I’ll go and make the challenge now, if you like, little one.” He reached for his axe.
“Don’t you dare. If you get cut down, they’ll make me one of their thralls. I’ll have to carry rocks and sharpen weapons for the rest of my life,” Balint said. “I could probably fuck my way out of thralldom in a month, of course, but it would be a very smelly, very sore month. No-you need to do this the classical way. In the middle of the night when no one’s looking.”
Morget scowled. He would have preferred to kill his father in broad daylight. But he supposed she had a point. Morg cheated-he was famous for it. Perhaps it was time to see how he felt when someone broke the rules on him.
Chapter Eighty-Nine
The rocks kept coming, though not as frequently as when the bombardment began. Most of the missiles struck Castle Hill-sticking up above the level of the wall, it made an excellent target-and did little harm. The constant fear of attack might actually have helped Malden a little, since it kept people off the streets.
On top of everything else-starvation, greedy thieves, a horde of barbarians-now he had to worry that the city would be overrun from within, by a mob of zealots.
The cry for blood sacrifice had been taken up all over the city. His thieves and whores seemed mostly immune, but the honest folk of Ness had given themselves over to religious mania. Every day more people claimed that if the proper sacrifices were made at the Godstone, the barbarians would have no choice but to pack up and leave. Conversely, a rumor started making the rounds that failure to appease the Bloodgod would cause the city wall to collapse.
That was not based entirely on conjecture. Malden had heard a rumor when he as a child-grisly stories being a favorite topic of conversation for street urchins-that when Juring Tarness built the wall eight hundred years ago, he had sacrificed his three chief architects to Sadu and mixed their blood with the mortar that held the bricks together. He had thereby made the wall impenetrable to mortal weapons. In eight centuries that theory had never been tested. Now it seemed an article of faith that the shield of blood must be replenished in time of need.