When the news reached Voesin province, it sparked off a minor revolt in that already unsettled and unreliable corner of the Empire. A man appeared out of nowhere in the town square in Rezlain on market day, announcing that he was God’s chosen envoy, sent to lead the people out of slavery, and dragging along with him a startled and apparently half-witted young man who turned out to be the last descendant of the former royal house of Voesin. About six thousand people straggled into the rebel camp before the cavalry arrived; although a third of them were women, old men or boys, they managed to hold out for six days, until a full company of artillery was brought up from Ap’ Betnagur and the camp was buried under a mountain of seventy-pound trebuchet shot.
The detainees in the Auzeil house were probably among the last people on the Island to hear the news, which arrived in the early hours of the morning in the form of a bench, borrowed from outside the Faith and Integrity four doors down the alley, and which smashed a panel out of Venart’s front door. The soldiers on duty scrambled out of their bivouac in the courtyard to investigate; but by that time the door was open and a dozen armed men were in the hallway. What followed wasn’t a fight in any realistic sense; one soldier made it halfway up the main staircase before an arrow between the shoulders brought him down again, bump-bump-bump on his face, but otherwise it was all very controlled and efficient.
They found Venart hiding under his bed (‘I told you that’d be the first place they’d look,’ Vetriz commented as they hauled him out; she hadn’t done much better, ducking behind the curtains) and told him that he was now the new leader of the Island resistance army, which was poised to retake the city and drive the enemy into the sea.
‘Who the hell are you?’ Venart demanded, trying in vain to tug his collar out of the grip of the man who’d thus hailed him. ‘And what the hell do you think you’re doing?’
The man grinned. ‘We’re your allies,’ he replied. ‘Gorgas Loredan sent us to rescue you. Look sharp, the glorious revolution can’t hang about while you put your socks on.’
‘Gorgas Loredan?’ Venart managed to say, before they bustled him out of the house. Meanwhile, another of the liberators had caught Eseutz Mesatges trying to shin down a drainpipe, and brought her out too. ‘Ask her,’ the squad leader went on, ‘she was one of the people he talked to when they had the meeting.’
‘Eseutz?’ Venart looked mystified. ‘What meeting?’ Eseutz was struggling to get dressed (she’d grabbed the first thing that came to hand when she heard the door being smashed in; unfortunately it was the warrior-princess outfit, which properly speaking needed the help of a strong maidservant to get into). ‘I don’t know what he’s talking about,’ she said.
‘You’re lying,’ Venart replied. ‘For gods’ sakes, stop fooling about and tell me, what’s been going on?’
‘All right,’ Eseutz admitted angrily, straining to reach a stray shoulder-strap that was dangling out of reach behind her back. ‘Yes, I did meet Gorgas bloody Loredan; he was going around saying we should stick the provincial office for more money for the ships.’
‘It was his idea?’
‘I suppose so,’ Eseutz said. ‘Anyway, he was suggesting it to everybody in the Ship-Owners’ who’d listen. Gods only know why.’
Venart shook his head. No, he couldn’t make sense of any of it, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that there was sense in there somewhere, only he wasn’t devious enough to understand it. ‘So it was his fault,’ he said, ‘all this – the occupation and everything. Because he was stirring up trouble.’
‘Give yourselves some credit,’ the squad leader interrupted. ‘Mostly it was you people’s fault, because you’re greedy and very, very stupid. But yes, Gorgas planted the idea in your pathetic little heads; and now that the army’s been wiped out, he’s going to help you get out of it again.’
Eseutz grabbed his arm. ‘What do you mean,’ she said, ‘the army’s been wiped out?’
‘You haven’t heard?’ The squad leader laughed. ‘You’ve got King Temrai to thank for your freedom,’ he said. ‘I’m amazed you don’t know. There’s been riots in the streets here pretty well non-stop the last two days, and the sub-prefect can’t do anything about it, not with half his garrison all cut up from the battle and the other half on permanent guard to keep the ships from sailing away.’ He nudged Venart painfully in the ribs and grinned. ‘You’d better get a move on, illustrious leader, or you’ll be late for your own revolution.’
‘What do you mean,’ Eseutz repeated, ‘wiped out? That’s impossible.’
‘Wiped out. Forty thousand dead. Caught ’em on the plains and cut ’em to ribbons. I must say, I never knew they had it in ’em. I mean, taking Perimadeia, yes; but my old granny and her cat could’ve done that. Knocking off an Imperial army, though – that takes some doing.’ He looked up; his men had found Athli and brought her out too. ‘Makes four,’ he said, ‘right, that’ll do. We’ll head for the Faussa warehouse; there’s ten thousand quarters’ worth of halberds and partisans in there that old man Faussa somehow forgot to mention to the sub-prefect when they were doing the confiscations. Once we get that lot out on the street, things’ll really start to happen.’
To Venart Auzeil it all looked worryingly familiar; he’d been in Perimadeia on the night of the Fall, and the sight of armed men running in the streets was something he found highly evocative. But he told himself that these were our armed men; and it was true enough, you only had to look closely at them to see they’d never handled a weapon before in their lives. But a poleaxe or a bardische isn’t like a harp or a jeweller’s lathe; you don’t have to be terribly good at it to make it work in some fashion, and when the enemy aren’t standing to face you, some fashion is good enough.
Apart from a few desultory foot patrols and the sentries posted outside some buildings, there weren’t any soldiers to be seen. According to the squad leader, they were all either barricaded into the Merchant Venturers’ Hall or crowded on to the ships down on the Drutz. Venart didn’t like the sound of that.
‘We can’t just leave them there,’ he said. ‘How are we going to get them out?’
The squad leader smiled and picked a lantern off a wall-sconce outside a tavern. ‘Easy,’ he said. ‘Watch and learn.’
The crowd surrounding the Merchant Venturers’ was large and noisy, but standing back a respectful distance after the Imperial archers had given them a demonstration of the effective range of an issue crossbow -
(‘Lucky for us,’ the squad leader pointed out. ‘They sent all the longbowmen with the army, and they didn’t come back; all they’ve got here are crossbows, and they can only shoot once every three minutes.’)
– But the sheer number of them was what impressed Venart the most. He hadn’t imagined that his fellow countrymen would be so quick and so eager to risk their lives for their liberty. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if they had anything to lose.