We were heading for the main gates. Whose idea was that? It struck me that there was more than one agenda at work now — that Estrada and Ondeges might have different ideas about what came next and that, once again, we were two separate groups with two very separate intentions.
Yet, as if we’d been forged together by our long spell underground, we seemed incapable of separating. Palace and city guardsmen rushed side by side through the pristine corridors, along halls and through archways and past bubbling fountains — and against all reason, we were all hurrying together towards the din that reverberated through every wall.
Then, finally, we were plunging through the palace’s main doors, and before us was the courtyard, beyond that the main gatehouse. The sight that met my eyes was the last I’d have hoped to see, the worst I might reasonably have imagined — but at least it explained what all the noise was about.
There in the courtyard, men were fighting, men of a similar mix to our own little party: palace soldiers lined against city guardsmen and Mounteban’s ruffians, barbarians and swords-for-hire.
We’d arrived in the middle of a war.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Making our appearance amidst a raging battle had one benefit: no one was paying us much attention. So preoccupied were they with hacking, slashing and bludgeoning each other that even the arrival of thirty and more men, a woman, one giant and a long-suffering thief had hardly turned a head.
Less advantageous was the fact that whatever fragile accord had developed amongst our party was fast dissolving. Ondeges had already split off his men, and all had their weapons drawn, even if they hadn’t put them to use as yet; the same went for Navare and his guardsmen, who were manoeuvring, swords out, for a place to make their stand amidst the chaos. Lastly, the buccaneers were retreating in a ragtag pack around the inner wall, having evidently decided that this was a test too far of their tenuous loyalties.
That left only Estrada, Saltlick and I upon the steps leading from the palace entrance. Saltlick was deathly pale and still hunched over, as though his time underground had warped his spine forever. Staring at the fighting, his eyes held the panicked glint of someone who’d woken from nightmares into the most furious of storms.
Estrada, too, was gazing around wild-eyed — though her focus was solely upon Ondeges, Navare and their respective factions. “No… damn it! The truce-”
“What truce?” I yelled at her. “You can’t believe Ondeges meant that!”
“Of course he meant it. Do you really think that…” The sentence broke off, as Estrada glanced about her. “Where is he?”
I was rapidly losing my grip on the conversation, not to mention any ability to care when nearby people were enthusiastically trying to kill each other. “Where’s who, damn it?”
“Malekrin,” she said. “Where’s Malekrin?”
At that name, something cold sunk inside me, like a plumb line dropped into my inmost depths. Because Estrada was right, Malekrin was nowhere to be seen — and as my own eyes sought frantically over the space between palace steps and gatehouse, over the knots of fighting men, I realised I couldn’t even say when I’d last seen him.
The Bastard Prince: the single concrete advantage we’d gained from our disastrous expedition, our bargaining chip with the King and for that matter with the Shoanish, if and when they arrived; in short, our one and only scant hope. I’d let him slip through my fingers and, as if that weren’t bad enough, he’d taken the crown of Altapasaeda with him.
All told, this was one calamity I didn’t want laid at my feet. “What do you mean?” I shouted, with all the innocence I could muster, “weren’t you watching him?”
I’d expected a scathing reply. When it didn’t come, I looked where Estrada was looking — and was startled to see Alvantes, sword in hand, staring back from the gatehouse. So he’d managed to escape the palace all those days ago, and now here he was again, once more deep in the thick of battle. Even as I saw him, he pointed in our direction and bellowed, “Protect Marina Estrada! Protect our men!”
Then he was moving — and when the mood took him, no one moved like Alvantes did. Though his clothes were torn and bloody, the chainmail beneath rent by two long gashes, he pushed forward with all the ferocity of a wild boar suddenly cut loose. When a half dozen paces placed a palace soldier in his path, Alvantes swatted the man’s blade aside with his own and barged forward, sending his opponent tumbling. A second soldier he side-stepped past, before slamming an elbow like a hammer blow into his neck. Already Alvantes was halfway to us, and a channel was opening ahead of him that his men strove to fill, before their enemies could appreciate what was happening.
Meanwhile, Navare and his guardsmen had folded into a tight semicircle in front of us. “Ready?” he asked Estrada. She drew her own sword, gave a terse nod — and we were off.
There had to be some order to the fighting, some strategy or logic, but for the life of me I couldn’t see it. To watch, it was hard to believe there were even sides, that it wasn’t every man for himself. Yet with Alvantes making his push to rescue us and Navare forcing his own way through the turmoil, it was clear even to me that, whatever the nature of the battle had been, it was now changing abruptly.
Over on the left flank, I glimpsed another familiar face, though one I could happily have never seen again: Ludovoco was fencing simultaneously with two men in unfamiliar uniforms, who I took to be part of Mounteban’s faction. It was clear he was barely testing himself — and even as he registered Alvantes’s gambit, he dispatched one with such casual ease that the other almost tripped over his own feet in surprise. The man was so busy trying to retreat that he hardly even saw Ludovoco’s sword go into his belly; he only flinched and crumpled round it, until Ludovoco tipped his arm up and let him slide to the cobbles.
Then Ludovoco raised the bloodied blade to point and said — not loudly, but distinct enough that I heard it even at such a distance — “Kill them!”
It was more than a command; it was an imperative. If I hadn’t been so busy hurrying, hustled along by the guardsmen around me, I’d have struggled not to try and follow it myself. Our only slender advantage was that so few of his men were in any position to listen, and fewer in a position to respond.
But that was enough — thanks to Alvantes. Before we were even a third of the way across the courtyard he’d bridged the gap between our two groups, and the passage he’d left in his wake, cobbled with a dozen broken, bleeding men, was rapidly shored up by his troop. Navare’s guardsmen fell in to join them — and suddenly there was an avenue through the turmoil opened before us.
Even as I broke into a run, Ludovoco’s forces were starting to coordinate, trying to carve their way to us. Again, they’d have stood a better chance if it weren’t for Alvantes, now fighting a frantic rearguard alongside Navare. In the instant I spared to glance his way, he was somehow fending off two palace soldiers at once, each a head taller than him and clearly baffled at how their blows failed to land upon a one-handed man.
Then we were into the gatehouse and through, and the guardsmen were collapsing back around us, those that could still move at all, as they threw whatever stamina they had left into covering our escape. Reaching the grand plaza that ringed the palace, I blinked against the bright morning sun and at the statued fronts of the temples. Still reeling from the shock of finding myself in the midst of battle for no clear reason, my head was awhirl.