‘Since your best work so far has been fixing that rodent problem out in the Triverne slums, that doesn’t necessarily fill me with confidence. ’
‘The trouble with you, Dagesh, is that you don’t know artistry when you see it.’
‘I don’t see bloody anything. Can’t see the wards can I? Not a mage, am I?’
Poradz smiled. Dagesh was funny when he was in this mood. The mock belligerence. Any luck and they’d be treated to his impersonation of Garan before long.
‘Ah, my poor blind friend. Such a world is forever closed to you and you are left having to trust me, the poor feeble mage.’
‘Where the fuck did they all come from?’ Dagesh was pointing out towards the rainforest and its diabolical noise. ‘Gather round, lads, we’ve got company. Get some shields up, would you, Adzo?’
Poradz followed Dagesh’s outstretched arm and flinched like he’d seen a ghost. Standing just inside the cast of the lanterns and torches, not close enough to trip his wards, were those damned painted elves. They made him shudder. He’d not seen them fight but he’d heard what others said. Nasty.
‘Jylan, a shield, please.’
‘Yes, boss.’
The guards gathered around Dagesh a few yards from the end of the bridge. The elves clustered behind one of their number who looked a bit of a mess in all honesty. Like someone had shaved him with the jaw of a dog. There was something about him though, something knowing that Poradz didn’t like at all.
They just stared, not making a sound or a gesture. Their eyes didn’t blink. Poradz could feel the cold aggression rising from them. An intent that was hard to deny even though he knew they’d never get across the bridge.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Hadran, booming voice echoing off the river rapids underneath them.
‘I’m thinking they’re not so clever,’ said Dagesh. He wandered down a couple of paces and beckoned to them. ‘Come and join us. Plenty of room up here. Bit early for you to be surrendering. Perhaps your timekeeping is lacking, eh? Dawn’s that bit when the sun comes up. Fucking sharp-eared savages. Not a fucking clue.’
Behind him they all laughed. Dagesh spat towards them and turned, a broad smile on his face. Unseen by him, the elves melted back into the night, silent and smooth.
‘What was all that about?’ asked Poradz.
‘Buggered if I know,’ said Dagesh. He came and stood beside Poradz and the two of them looked out into the night. ‘Who’s to know the mind of a-’
The scruffy-looking one was coming through the air. Poradz watched him bring his body into a tight tuck and turn two somersaults before landing on the balls of his feet not a yard from them. His blade was out in the next breath and before Dagesh’s shouts had registered on the rest. Before Dagesh’s blade was drawn, the elf had stuck him straight in the heart and torn a big gash in his chin.
Poradz felt hot blood spray on his face. He cried out and staggered back. More and more of them were leaping onto the bridge. Huge jumps. Clearing his wards easily. Part of him admired the grace with which they moved. Most of him was too terrified to pull the shape of a spell together to help himself or anyone.
He could already hear some of his comrades running. Poradz backed away. One of the elves approached him, quick, like he was gliding. Poradz felt an impact to his temple. Another to his gut. And one of exquisite pain that broke his left knee. He screamed and fell, tried to scrabble away.
The rest were all running but the elves were so fast. Poradz saw his comrades engulfed. Cut down. The sheer speed of the elves’ limbs when they struck registered in his agonised mind. They barely paused in their stride either. Like a dance. Poradz stopped trying to move. His knee was a sheet of pain and he thought he was going to throw up.
A hand grabbed his shoulder and threw him over onto his back. The scruffy one was looking down at him, curious, like a predator seeing new prey for the first time. Poradz shuddered at the gaze. There was intelligence there but something else too. Like bits of his mind were elsewhere and he couldn’t stare with the whole of both eyes.
The elf spoke. Poradz hadn’t bothered learning elvish and didn’t catch a word of it. The elf put a hand on his head, the other on his chest. The elf breathed in deep and nodded. He said something more, nodded again and walked away. Another elf took his place.
This one had blood-slick blades in her hands. Estok took his cells left to head away through the yards and round the marsh, meaning to track the coast all the way to the dockside. With him went two of the reserve cells. The other reserve cells moved along the main road before disappearing into the back streets to come to their starting positions.
Katyett led the main force across the dark fields, where the grain grew tall and dense. Takaar was ahead of them all, ensuring their path was safe. Where the stems thinned before the first buildings of Frey-Ultan, the district dominated by farmers and farm workers, they could see the four columns of smoke that signified the occupation of Shorth by its high priest.
Katyett wondered if Llyron remained free or was languishing in one of the cells below the temple. Those reserved for the elves of mixed thread for assessment of their suitability or otherwise for service. Maybe she was dead. Somehow Katyett doubted that. Llyron would not have been slow to point out that, without a high priest of Shorth, no order would remain among the elves. Humans didn’t want riots; they wanted subservience.
The temple piazza bordered the rainforest at the south-eastern edge of the city. It was protected from the forest’s lust for expansion by the River Ix, which plunged through a sheer cleft in the earth that ran for two miles, upstream to the borders of the Olbeck Rise and downstream to the rapids at the Ultan bridge. It had a crossing, known as the Senserii Approach. This was a grand wooden structure, beloved of pilgrims because it was the most direct route to the piazza from the canopy.
Myth held that the first Senserii, or those who became the first Senserii, had used it to escape persecution in their villages and towns deep inside the forest, taking sanctuary in Shorth as was their right. It made a good story, but Katyett preferred to believe that the first Senserii had been the results of mixed unions in the slums of Banyan and Valemire in the west of the city and been dumped at Shorth unwanted and unloved.
‘I wonder what’s happened to them?’ she said.
‘Who?’ asked Grafyrre.
‘The Senserii,’ she said.
They were moving through the fringes of the grain fields, their passage barely moving a stalk. Takaar had slowed dramatically. Katyett trilled a warning, using the sound of a common swift. Behind her, the TaiGethen stopped.
‘We could do with them right now,’ said Grafyrre.
‘Not if they remain loyal to Llyron,’ said Katyett.
‘They will have had little choice despite what Pelyn thinks,’ said Merrat.
They moved up to Takaar’s shoulder where he was crouched with Marack and Auum. Katyett could almost taste the unease of her people behind her. The mistrust of their former Arch. But this time Takaar wasn’t muttering. Katyett waved her Tai to crouch. The walls of the temple of Orra were close. Twenty paces across open ground and a drainage channel. Takaar spoke.
‘They have set their castings right along the boundary and across the entire span of the bridge on the outside of the rails. They are all over the walls and probably on the roofs of Appos, Orra and Gyal. Cefu too. I can’t see anything around Shorth. We’re too distant.’
‘Can we jump them? Weave through them?’ asked Katyett.
‘Not this time. They’re too well placed. I suspect they’ve withdrawn any guard to the central lawns and are using the castings as early warnings.’