'You hoped things would get better,' Fost told Erimenes, pulling the satchel flap back from over the jug inside. If he and Moriana were about to be murdered by the mob, Erimenes might as well get an unobstructed view.
'Stop!' The voice rolled like a great bell, drowning even the strident cries of Sir Tharvus.
Quiet descended over the crowd scattered across the marble flagstones of the Plaza. Down from the bleachers strode Foedan, tall and unafraid, holding his arms wide as if smoothing the jagged emotions of the crowd. The crowd faltered, lost impetus. He walked toward the bloodstained leaders. Fost and Moriana clearly heard the padding of his soft suede boots on the marble.
'Cease this display,' he said. The mob stared at him, weapons hanging limp in a hundred hands. 'This woman has saved you from destruction. You should fall on your knees with gratitude, not attack her like so many jackals.'
'But… but she's a witch!' a voice faltered from the middle ranks of the crowd.
'She is a sorceress. Were she not, the Fallen Ones would have arrived in these streets by now, bringing with them flame and thirsty blades. You and all your families would be dead, the death meted out by the damned reptiles!'
'Don't listen to him!' Tharvus shrieked. 'Slay her! She sold out humanity to regain her throne. Slay her!' Stil! the mob remained poised on the knife edge of indecision. 'No,' Foedan said, not loudly but distinctly. 'He'll never hold them,' said Ziore. 'Moriana, do something.' Fost's stomach twisted to a sudden premonition. 'No!' he shouted. But it was too late.
Moriana raised a hand, swept fingers in an intricate gesture. A globe of pure white light appeared over Foedan's head, competing with the sun in intensity. A moan of fear and awe swept through the crowd. The knight gazed at the mob, not seeming to notice the luminous display above his head.
'See? He's sold out, too!' Tharvus cried. His eyes blazed with a mad light as bright as the mystic sphere hanging over Foedan. 'Behold, the witch has set her mark upon him!'
The crowd gave throat to an animal cry of rage. They fell upon the lone, unarmed knight with club and cleaver and bare fists. He stood unmoving until the seething bodies hid him from view.
Teom yelped like a scalded cat and raced to the steps of the Temple crying, 'Sanctuary! Give me sanctuary!'
The platoon of Life Guards that had attended him on the bleachers went clattering by the kiosk and up the wide steps after their master. They ran as much to protect him as to save their own hides. No amount of training prepared their officers to face sure suicide by standing and fighting off this mob. 'What ho!' Erimenes sang out. 'A battle!'
'I'm glad the prospect pleases you.' Fost drew his blade and held it in front of him without conviction.
One of the members of the masons guild who had helped strike down the Watchmen raced at Moriana, swinging a long pry-bar he had used to lever up chunks of the paving marble. She snapped out of her fog of horror at what her attempt at help had won Sir Foedan and backed with a ringing clang of steel on iron. She fought to retain her grip on the sword as the stonemason attacked again and again. A laborer swung a hammer at Fost, and he had no time to worry about Moriana.
Fost's blade crossed the haft of the hammer with an odd sound. The workman reeled back, mewling like a lost soul. 'Shrewdly struck,' congratulated Erimenes.
Fost stared. The man's right hand hung from a rag of skin, yet Fost's parry hadn't come anywhere near it. Then Fost saw that his sword had bent itself into an L shape around the hardwood shaft nearly severing his assailant's hand at the wrist.
'Come on!' he shouted to Moriana. She thrust into the twisted face of an attacker and spun, following him back to the bleachers with the mob hot after them. The flimsy wooden structure thundered and vibrated beneath frantic feet as the assembled notables fled the wrath of the populace. The mob was pouring into the Plaza from both directions now. As hazardous as the bleachers were, they offered the only ground on which to make a stand. As Fost and Moriana went booming up the stands, a hairy-armed man made a grab at Erimenes's wavering form. 'Unhand me, you rogue!' shrilled the genie.
'Oh, my darling, are you hurt?' cried Ziore. Fost moaned. The man snatched again and seized one of the straps flapping wildly on Fost's kilt. His sword useless, Fost swung Erimenes's satchel and caught the man squarely on the side of the head. The man fell backward and went cartwheeling down the tiers of benches. One of the benches at the bottom gave way under the added weight with a loud snapping noise. The man's back was obviously broken.
They made the top of the bleachers and turned, momentarily ahead of the pursuit. Here the angry crowd could only come at them with difficulty, and some of the most vocal members of the mob sheered off short of the steps, wary of the bleachers' penchant for falling. The would-be killers came in ones and twos. Moriana was able to send them reeling down again, gashed and bloody, while Fost propped his sword tip against the bench and tried to kick it straight again.
He slipped, slashing his right calf, cursed, looked accidentally over the edge. The hard marble of the Plaza was a good forty feet below. There was no escape that way.
'Where the hell are the soldiers?' he shouted, swinging his almost-straight sword against a long-haired man hacking at him with a billhook. The blade struck edge-on and didn't bend. Fost put a sandaled foot in the man's belly and sent him staggering into the sweat-streaming faces of a dozen fellows.
'Don't expect help from them,' Moriana panted through a lull in the attacks. She pointed her chin up the street.
'It appears your elevation is resented more than anyone anticipated,' Erimenes said dryly. 'Or perhaps the Twenty-third is paying off some long-standing grudges against the City Watch.'
The lightly armed but more numerous infantrymen had thrown themselves against the massively armored Watch, preventing them from coming to the aid of the Imperial party. In the other direction, Imperial troops fought each other, too. Fost shook his head and spat blood. A blow had caught him in the mouth, and he hadn't noticed it until now.
'Their commanders won't even stand trial for this,' he said bitterly. 'Look. Teom's out of it.'
Moriana glanced across the sea of bobbing heads that flooded the Plaza. Teom and the innumerable clerics had disappeared. The great gilt valves of the Temple were shut and guarded by a line of Life Guards with raised shields and lowered spears. A fresh wave of attackers flowed against Fost and Moriana leaving no time for talk.
An apprentice stonemason dressed in a leather jerkin thrust at Fost with a shortsword taken from a dead Watchman. Fost disengaged and ran the man through. Screaming, the apprentice toppled off the verge of the bleachers, but not before the courier had wrenched the sword from his grasp.
Fost turned back and found a big man almost on top of him, swinging a makeshift club at his head. He caught the thick wrist in his free hand and aimed a disembowelling stroke at the giant belly squashed against his hips.
'Ellu!' he gasped into a face he knew well from the streets of his childhood. He faltered.
He recalled in a flash the foundling kitten they'd found and nursed together with scraps of food purloined to ease the complaining of their own bellies. No such memories stayed Ellu's now-fat hand.
'Traitor!' he snarled through spit and a cloud of reeking breath. He twisted his burly arm free of Fost's grip and cracked him across the face with his cudgel. Fost saw blackness and dancing sparks, fought to keep his balance with heels dangling over emptiness.
Ellu raised the club to finish him off. His arm stopped in midstroke, as if caught and held by an invisible hand. A look of consternation gripped the man's florid features. Then Moriana seized his shoulder, spun him from her lover and struck him down, crying her thanks to Ziore for staying the man's hand with her emotion-confusing powers. Dizzy and nauseated, Fost dropped to his knees.