“No, they've all got arrowslits.” Errollyn had a shaft on his string, but did not draw. That was House Belis, over there, behind that wall. They had a view of all comings and goings through Garelo Temple. The patachis had once tried to mount a joint guard around the temple, to stop the nightwraiths passage. The death watch, its unfortunate members had called it. Life expectancy on the death watch had been measured not in days, but in hours. At night, no part of Petrodor outside the fortress walls of the great mansions did not belong to the Nasi-Keth. At Garelo Temple, they had written that message in blood.
The walls of Garelo Temple were lined with arches, like ribs along the temple's sides. Errollyn looked that way now, and even Sasha saw movement by one pillar. Hand signals in the dark, too indistinct to make sense of.
“We'll have to run,” Rhillian said grimly. The signals had meant nothing good, Sasha gathered. She peered to the right where buildings overlooked the courtyard opposite Belis Mansion. There was no telling where a man of the families might be hiding with a crossbow, this dangerous night…
“I'll go,” said Liam, with intensity. “I'll draw their fire.”
“Adele will go,” said Rhillian, nodding to a serrin woman with gleaming, pale hazel eyes. “She sees better. You'll follow. We go rapidly from then. Give them no chance to reload.”
One of the other serrin also had a bow, and took position behind and to one side of Errollyn. Adele whispered some last-minute advice in Liam's ear, hands gesturing the way ahead, then she readied behind Errollyn and the other archer. Both men drew their bows with creaking force. Adele sprinted, a lithe shadow fading into the dark, her soft boots making barely a sound. Sasha held her breath, but no arrowfire came.
Rhillian gestured and Liam set off in pursuit. “Damn, I hate archers,” Sasha muttered to herself. All her training, and she had no defence against archers but to move fast, hide silently and pray. It wasn't fair.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” came Errollyn's voice. Sasha blinked. She hadn't meant that.
Another serrin ran, and still no firing. Sasha peered across the courtyard gloom, seeking the shapes of people. Adele seemed to arrive at the temple, Liam gaining behind. Another signal from Rhillian and Yulia took off running. Two thuds from the Belis wall and a frightening hiss. Yulia fell. Errollyn and his companion fired, and Rhillian sprinted into the courtyard. Sasha watched in horror as Rhillian reached the fallen girl, hauled her to her feet and dragged her stumbling onward. More thuds from the wall, and a clatter of crossbow bolts off pavings as Rhillian threw Yulia flat, falling together.
Another thump from Errollyn's bow, and a scream from the Belis wall. One of the crossbowmen had evidently stuck his head up too high.
“Go!” Sasha told the other serrin bowman. He loosed another arrow and sprinted.
“You next,” said Errollyn, drawing his third arrow and seeking a target. Pitch black, firing at hidden archers at a hundred paces, and Errollyn was actually seeking targets, expecting to hit someone. Just ridiculous.
Sasha checked the narrow road behind them, to be certain there was no one sneaking up. Errollyn fired and cursed in Lenay. Sasha sprinted across the courtyard. Dark shapes along the way were flower gardens, she realised as she ran, every sinew dreading the imminent hiss of arrowfire. A shot came, and she flinched in midsprint, but the hiss-and-clatter fell some distance behind.
Ahead, the temple and its surrounding protection of arches and pillars approached. She heard another two thuds, but again, the bolts were far away. And then she arrived, skidding to a halt behind the pillars. Immediately there were footsteps and then Errollyn arrived. He must have been fast to have nearly overtaken her. She was quick but her legs were not nearly as long.
Against the wall of the temple, Yulia sat. Sasha ran across. “Yulia! Are you hit?”
“She's fine,” said Rhillian.
“I'm sorry,” said Yulia, miserably. “I…I heard the shot and I flinched, and then I tripped up…”
“It's okay,” said Sasha. “I flinched too. We don't have to do that again, do we?”
Rhillian shrugged. “I don't actually go looking for trouble, you know.”
“If you shout loudly enough, and wave your knickers in the air, trouble will find you,” Errollyn remarked. Rhillian gave him an emerald stare that might have pinned a more timid person to the wall.
“You actually missed back there,” Sasha told him, waiting for her heart to slow once more.
“You imagined it,” said Errollyn.
“His second shot did not miss,” said the second serrin bowman, covering the courtyard with his bow from a neighbouring pillar. “He's the only one who actually found the arrowslit.”
Sasha stared at Errollyn. “You shot a man through the arrowslit? I thought he just stood up too high.”
“Those wall posts have roofs,” said Errollyn. “You can't stand up high.”
There were several more serrin already waiting at the temple. One was Terel, tall with red-brown hair and deep bronze eyes. “Nice to see you well,” he said at Sasha's side as they made their careful way around the temple, away from the Belis Mansion.
“And nice to see you,” said Sasha. Like Errollyn and Aisha, Terel had fought with Sasha in Lenayin and she knew him quite well from their time together on the road to Petrodor. Unlike Errollyn and Aisha, Terel was quite the traditional serrin…if “traditional” was any sort of word to apply to a people who did not practise traditions in the sense that most humans meant them. He was formal and reserved, but no less likeable for it. “Been waiting long?”
“One waits,” said Terel, in eloquent Saalsi. “One lives, one ponders, one counts the stars.”
“Quite,” said Sasha, repressing a smile.
There was a passage between the temple and the rectory, and the party slipped down it, gathering again beneath the columns on the temple's far side, directly upon the main ridge road. The ridge road ran along the top of the Petrodor Incline, from one end of the city to the other, connecting the most powerful properties in Petrodor. Here, the opposing walls were high, but without guard posts-only the most powerful families willingly picked fights with the nightwraiths. The nearest off road was to the right, Sasha knew, having come this way a few times before, though never on a night like this.
“Errollyn, Adele, Marlen, Liam, Yulia,” said Rhillian, “you go ahead. I'll guard the rear with Sasha, Vinae, and Terel.” She was more worried about House Belis than whatever lay ahead, Sasha realised.
Errollyn leapt the steps from the temple grounds down to the road and ran softly beside the opposing wall. The others followed, spreading out to avoid giving wall archers an easy shot into a bunch. Vinae-the second archer-watched back toward the Belis Mansion, an arrow at the ready. There would be other serrin in the temple grounds, Sasha knew, invisible in the shadows, or on rooftops, securing these strategic grounds from the families.
There came a noise from the right, the sound of a gate creaking open. Then yells as men poured forth from a property in Errollyn's path, a stream of waving torches and weapons. Rhillian swore. “House Therold,” she muttered. “And so the ground shifts once more.”
Errollyn's bow thrummed. Vinae launched a shot into the dark, then more shots came from temple shadows, and from the roof overhead. Men screamed and swords flashed, a chaos of fighting in the firelight.
“Come on!” Sasha urged, desperate to assist.
Rhillian held up a firm hand. “Wait!” As if expecting something more. From a property much further up the right-hand road, more men with torches came charging. And then, to the left, the Belis gate squealed and ground. “Vinae, we'll take the left,” said Rhillian, as calmly as if she were noting the warm weather. “There's a lane opposite Belis House, we'll never make the right-hand lanes now.”