‘My thoughts exactly.’ Dystran smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘It is always a pleasure,’ said Ranyl.
He coughed, the pain wracking his body. On his lap, his familiar raised its head weakly and settled down again, looking nothing more than a sick cat.
‘You need to rest,’ said Dystran.
Ranyl chuckled. ‘I will have an eternity to do that, young pup. An eternity that is very soon to begin.’
North and west, the people poured out of Julatsa. The meetings across the city had been brief and harsh. The mayor had played his cards well, barring mages from the gatherings, determined to ensure that the people heard the unexpurgated truth, as he put it. Anyone who Pheone had managed to speak to following the meetings, which had gone on well into the night, reported nothing short of rabble-rousing.
The result had been angry but directionless demonstrations outside the college, a few threats levelled at the mages within for the trouble they had brought to the city and now this exodus. Early guesswork and a close watch on those leaving suggested that the charge, for such it appeared when it gathered momentum in the early afternoon, had been led by those who had only come to Julatsa for shelter.
The ranks had been swelled by women and children chaperoned by a sizeable number of armed men, often on horseback. It was a somewhat different story among businessmen, who could see their already precarious livelihoods collapsing around their ears if they left. But while many of these people determined to stay in the city, keeping open areas like markets, bakers and blacksmiths, they were not openly declaring their support for the college.
Julatsa, they had said, is my home and I will protect it and my business. If I help the college as a by-product, so be it. Hardly the vote of confidence Pheone had been hoping for. To be fair, friends had come to the college to pledge their support but they were so few that Pheone had considered sending them away for their own safety. Instead, she had welcomed them in and put them to work.
Despite the ever-present risk of mana failure, Pheone watched the ordered column of Julatsans leaving the northern border of the city from under ShadowWings. The effort of structuring and maintaining the simple casting told her all she needed to know about the depths of trouble in which Julatsan mana found itself but she was determined that she would not be scared out of using it. Indeed, if Geren was completely right, using magic helped maintain the Heart.
A determined movement from below caught her eye. Someone was waving up at her. She dipped lower and smiled sadly. Another friend deserting the city. The woman was beckoning her down and she obliged, pulling up to land just outside the last house before the empty north route guard tower. She heard muttering behind her at her arrival but no one spoke up.
‘Hello Maran,’ she said. ‘Sorry to see you’re leaving.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ said Maran. Her daughter, Maranie was walking along hand-in-hand beside her, the five-year-old sensing only the excitement, not the uncertainty. ‘But I can’t let her see what might come.’
‘I do understand,’ said Pheone. ‘You are why I spoke to the council. You should be assured of your safety. It’s what everyone in the college wants.’
‘The Mayor didn’t speak too kindly of you. None of you but you in particular,’ said Maran.
‘I’m sure he didn’t.’
‘You know, most of us don’t believe much of what he said.’
‘And what did he say?’
Maran paused before speaking. ‘That you courted war and expected us to defend you. That you felt above every other citizen, assuming yourselves rulers of the city. He was quite forceful about who was really in charge.’
‘It’s not something I’ve ever disputed,’ said Pheone. ‘We only ever wanted to work together to make the city great again.’
‘He said you had become a cancer that should be excised.’
That stopped Pheone in her tracks for a moment. ‘This is our city too,’ she said. ‘Why are you turning against us?’
‘We’re not. Well, I’m not. I just have to think of Maranie. I can’t take the chance.’
Pheone had heard enough. The Mayor had turned full face against them, that was clear. His words of passivity had turned to active hostility and she wondered what exactly he would say to the Xeteskians if he managed to talk to them.
‘I have to get back,’ she said. ‘Good luck.’
The two women kissed cheeks. ‘I’ll see you when I get back.’
Pheone felt a sudden rush as of cold water across her body. She stumbled suddenly and gasped a breath, ShadowWings disappearing, leaving a pain in her back.
‘We’re dying and you’re running,’ she said, the shock of the mana failure forcing unbidden anger into her voice.
‘I’m not—’
‘I wonder what city it is you will come back to, Maran. Perhaps you shouldn’t come back at all.’
She turned and walked back into the city, the void where her connection with the mana should have been tearing at her soul.
The desperation of the day before had made way for an extraordinary sense of optimism. It had no foundation. The allied forces were largely destroyed and the survivors only now banding together, with a force probably six times their complete size only a couple of hours behind them and closing, but still hopes were raised.
The only factor Blackthorne could attribute it to was the fact that, the more bands of twos, threes and fours he brought together, the more men who had thought all was lost saw that it was not quite as bad as they had believed. All animosity between Lystern and Dordover had disappeared. Strangers were greeted like long-lost brothers.
But in the face of this lightening of mood, Blackthorne was reminded of their situation all too often. His had been a simple yet challenging brief from Izack, one that he had been happy to accept from the Lysternan commander, who had demonstrated himself an exceptionally brave man.
Riding with the eight members of his guard who had survived the BlueStorm, he had undertaken to be the link between the fleeing groups of allied soldiers and mages, using the pace of his horses to cover the ground and his powers of persuasion to make those he found change direction in order to unite.
But for every three groups he found, from two terrified men clinging together, to one of a dozen and more with guard mages, he found another which had not escaped familiar, assassin or mage defender. He’d seen bodies scattered across a clearing; men who had died back to back, their desperate defence not enough; and the eyes of the dead open to the sky. What terrors they must have seen. The situation had worried him enough that he had ridden alone the previous night to speak to Izack. As a direct result, the familiar traps had been laid, catching some and scaring off many more.
Now though, Blackthorne was tired. He hadn’t slept since before the siege had been shattered. He’d changed horses twice and the one beneath him was showing reluctance. Making instant decision, he dismounted and led the horse by the reins, its expression pathetically grateful.
He was walking with the united shards of the allied force. He had found forty-seven soldiers and six mages. Paltry. Yet it was something. His men had heard of another four groups west or slightly ahead and were trying to round them up now. To keep up the spirits of these men and the pace of the walk, which pushed many beyond their normal limits, he dropped his baronial air.
He moved among them, cajoling and joking, asking after their health and promising plenty he could never deliver. And though it kept them going, it made his heart heavy. Mentally and physically, these men were finished. It was three days’ walk to Julatsa. And even if he got them there, what good would they be to the defence?
It was a question with a simple answer and that meant he had to change his plan. He had considered his options for an hour while they marched, mercifully without incident as they had been doing the entire day, when he heard a rider approaching. Natural consternation quickly gave way to relief when the men recognised the man in the saddle.