Whistling arrows made them all glance back, then shrieks not ten paces from the alley mouth. More yells, and the sound of a weapon clattering to the cobbles. Several had tried to charge the alley mouth it seemed. Bad idea.
“What did Daerlerin say?” Sasha asked, weapon ready in case some crazed fool appeared.
“He's not leaving,” said Errollyn with frustration. “It's eleven talmaad including him, and another ten household staff. I wouldn't rely on any of those in a fight.”
“Not all humans are completely useless with a blade,” Bret said sourly.
“Yeah, well a lot of these don't have full use of their limbs,” Errollyn retorted.
Saalshen employed many such folk in their properties, of course. Dear lords. “Look…we can help Gesheldin House at least. We can go around upslope. They're being pressured from there. We can relieve that pressure and probably disperse the mob…”
“Get to close quarters with these idiots?” Bret said dubiously. “We'd kill rather a lot.”
“Errollyn,” Sasha said quietly, “Bret's right. If we kill a lot of them, it might only make things worse. Most of midslope are shut up in their homes, they have no desire to get involved in this. But if many of their neighbours are slain, it may rouse them.”
“And if the numbers become that large,” Bret added, “there's nothing any of us can do. Best to leave things as they are and allow the rage to die down, I say.”
Errollyn glared at the Nasi-Keth man, green eyes burning. Bret nearly flinched. “And if huge mobs from Backside arrive, do we just let them all be slaughtered?”
“If huge mobs from Backside and Riverside arrive,” Bret replied, “then Daerlerin's fate rests with Daerlerin. If he comes to our sanctuary on Dockside, he and his people will be saved. If not, they'll die. Saalshen's properties are too spread out to withstand such an assault. Individually, they are defensible, but not collectively, and not on this scale.”
“Saalshen relied on the trade for defence, just as you've said,” Sasha said sombrely. “They failed to think ahead to the day when the trade would no longer protect them.”
Errollyn slumped against the alley wall and rested his head against the wet stone. Light rain fell gently into his face. He looked in pain. “Rhillian,” he murmured. “What have you done?”
Aisha burst into the hearth room, panting and wet. Rhillian, Kiel, Terel, Patachi Gaordin and his sons looked up from a table where a map of Petrodor had been unrolled. Patachi Gaordin and his sons were all armed. Of Lady Gaordin, the daughters and children, there was no sign. All furniture had been pushed to the walls, and buckets of water positioned in the corners, in case of fire.
“They're coming,” Aisha panted, in Torovan, for the humans’ benefit. “A great column up the Saint's Walk. There are priests with them, holding stars on poles. They carry fire and chant words of Verenthane greatness and other, filthy things I shan't repeat.” She accepted a cup of water from one of Gaordin's sons and drank thirstily. The others exchanged looks. “They appear quite well armed, there are hoes and scythes, in addition to the more usual weapons.”
She leaned on the table and stared at the map, calculating distances in her head. There was not enough time. Fear gripped her, worse than any time since Enora.
“Hoes and tools do not make them quite well armed,” Kiel said coolly, his clear grey eyes impassive. “We should not overestimate the capabilities of ignorant peasants with farming implements.”
“How many, Aisha?” Rhillian asked quietly.
“Thousands,” Aisha whispered. “I've never seen so many thousands. I had quite a good vantage on the temple tower, the column stretches all the way up the Backside slope.” When she met Rhillian's eyes, her gaze was haunted. “It's just like Enora, Rhillian. Like the day the mob came to Charleren, and burned all the houses, and killed all the…” she broke off, looking at Patachi Gaordin. He looked scared. So did his sons. “We must get the families out. Rhillian, we cannot hold back so many. We should concentrate our defences on those properties that can be defended. In Charleren, they came with knowledge of all those families who were most friendly to serrin, and most especially where the half-castes lived. Those got the worst of it.”
Aisha had seen the aftermath of that, in her not-so-distant youth. Pretty Charleren, a typical, picturesque Enoran village, close to her parents’ farm. She had gone with her parents or her siblings to Charleren on many occasions, to buy or sell at market, or to call on her uncle and cousins. Charleren had had pretty stone cottages, a lovely old temple, a bustling market, and a view from its low hill across rolling green and yellow fields of maize and wheat.
Aside from her uncle, aunt and cousins, Aisha had known and liked many of the villagers. Gruff Tazian the mayor, who liked to dress in his old infantryman's surcoat and strut around like an officer, but would reduce children to squeals and giggles when they marched in his wake until he would turn and chase them, growling like a monster. Fat Romaldo, the butcher, who called all little girls “princess,” and whose bellowing laugh and dangling sausages were Aisha's most prominent memory of the old market. Old Mrs. Ishelda, always tending her flowers in her cottage garden, or baking sweetcakes that she would give away to village children. And her cousins’ friends, with whom she would play games, and take turns riding her uncle's two fat ponies.
The mob had risen from Andulan, a larger town, and had been driven by a gang of infiltrators from Larosa across the border, it was later found. Why Charleren, it was never discovered. Perhaps being small, relatively undefended, and near the border, its availability alone made it a target. Aisha recalled the alarm in the night, and the sight of fires aglow on the dark horizon. Her father had raced off, forbidding his wife or eldest son to follow. Both had fumed, but had stayed behind with Aisha and her siblings. At the first light of morning, word came that the mob had gone, and local riders were pursuing them into the fields. Aisha's mother had determined to take her children to Charleren, so that they could see the enemy's face.
She recalled walking the streets, smelling ash and smoke, seeing the remains of cottages-just bare, blackened walls about a pile of charred and smoking beams. Bodies on the street, some laid in rows where others had collected them for dignity, and others yet unclaimed. Blood on the paved road, as thick and red as after Papa had slaughtered a sheep. Mayor Tazian, hanging from the market courtyard tree by his neck, with several others, like some strange, horrid fruit. The ruin of Mrs. Ishelda's cottage, and the blackened, twisted corpse amid the beams, the carefully tended flowers twisted and brown from the heat. Romaldo the butcher had been the worst. Mama hadn't let her see him, for his cottage remained mysteriously unburned. Only later had she overheard children from another village telling how he had been tied to a chair, and forced to watch as his wife and children had been slaughtered before his eyes with his own butcher's knives, before suffering a slow death of many cuts. Romaldo had married a serrin lady, just like papa. Like Aisha and her brothers and sisters, Romaldo's children had had colourful hair and shiny eyes.
Of her uncle, aunt and cousins, only Dashi, the youngest, had survived. Mama and Papa had adopted him as their own, and from that day, he'd become Aisha's newest brother. He'd cried every night for months, and sometimes Aisha would take him into her bed and hold the little boy until he slept.
“We will stay,” said Patachi Gaordin, without conviction. “We will defend our home.”
Aisha stared at Rhillian. Rhillian looked down at the map, her eyes moving fast over the winding lines of streets, lanes and landmarks. “You must go,” she told Gaordin. She turned to the small man and put both hands on his shoulders. “Your family have been loyal friends to Saalshen for more than a hundred years. Your grandfather was a good friend to the first talmaad to arrive in Saalshen. We have done much for your family since then, my friend, and we would fight to defend your home if it were possible. But it cannot be done, not if we had ten times the talmaad that are available. Not against the numbers that march against us.”