To Run is to Hide

Tena has dragged her little sister across half the world to find safety within the fortified arms of Sarkapor. While the ancient city continues to resist the endless tide of Imperial assaults, Tena learns that there is more to fear than the enemy camped outside their gates.

As the siege rages around them, Tena and her friends search for her missing sister. Is an accident to blame, or the gangs that prowl the slums, even the soldiers sworn to protect them? And as the sinister truth comes out, Tena is forced to face her own dark past and the guilt that paved their way to Sarkapor.

Chapter 1

Outside the Tower

Tena had only seen one murdered person before, but she tried not to think about that too much. Those thoughts would turn to looking at her hands and the blood on them. She shook her head and glanced away, something hot and sticky clinging to the back of her throat.

"It's the flaming Imperials, I know it." Brinn said. He was leaning on his pitchfork, blue eyes inspecting the mangled body without a flicker of discomfort.
Gehanna couldn't seem to stomach it as well as her brother. She was looking away, but her voice didn’t waver. "He might've fallen."

"No, no, no.” Said Robbet, stroking the faint wisps of hair that clung to his chin and upper lip. Robbit's grandda was always lost in thought, stroking a magnificent grey beard that ended at his navel.

"Why's that?" Gehanna said, voice taking on a hard edge. She always got short when Robbet started fancying himself as wise and respected as his grandda, even though he didn’t have the wisdom, respect, or beard. "Look at how he's splatted. Look at how high the tower is."

"Yes, and yes, but look here." Robbet crouched down beside the body. He picked up a stick of alder and prodded at something in the man's remains.

Tena closed her eyes at the soft squelching sound.

"That's a knife cut. Here too. And here. My da's carves up for the..."

"Merchant Lords, high in their towers." Tena, Gehanna and Brinn said in unison. They all knew that Robbet's da was a butcher in the Lord’s Keep, and it seemed to cause Robbet pain to not remind them at every opportunity.

He nodded, satisfied that they knew, unaware that they poked fun.

"So, he was cut up. Up there," Brinn's pale eyes rose to the top of the Funnel Tower, "then fell."

"Or he was thrown." Tena said. "To hide the cuts." Sometimes she didn’t know where those thoughts came from. Well, she did, but she hid from those memories.

Everyone went silent.

Robbet was the first to break the silence. As was to be expected. "My uncle serves ale to the officers and generals..."

Everyone else looked at one another, eyes rolling or lips curling.

"...and they all say that the Imperials are like worms. They burrow into traitor's minds with promises of money and pardons."

"Promises in exchange for what?" Gehanna asked. Her hands darted to the pearl around her neck. It was small and barely shone, strung on a woven leather thong, but it was worth more than what all the rest of them had put together.

"Chaos. Burn granaries. Poison wells. Kill people. Break the siege from the inside."

Robbet had said the S-word, and they went silent again. This deep in the valley there were a few blessed moments in each day where Tena could forget what was going on beyond the walls. Robbet had taken them up there one night and shown them the Imperial campfires out on the plain. It was like looking at the Emperor's indomitable will, as if all the stars in the night sky had been ordered and organised in ranks and rows according to his law. As they'd stared at the inevitable, Robbet had assured them that hundreds of attackers died for every defender. Tena had looked down the four hundred feet of wall-crowned cliff and seen it to be true. Wrecked towers and ladders lay strewn amidst piles of bodies. The only movement for a mile had been ghouls prowling like hungry shadows.

Tena shivered. She couldn't count past her fingers and toes, but she'd known that even if hundreds died for every one defender, it was only a matter of time until Sarkapor was empty. The shiver snapped her out of the silence, and for the first time that she could remember, she broke it before Robbet.

"I'll get the guard." She said and took a step down the dirt path that wound between the leafless hedgerows.

"No!" Robbet looked each of them in the face. "What if we bring them in." His eyes had lit up, as if glory were already shining in them.

Tena, Brinn and Gehanna all shared a look.

"No way." Gehanna said. "What if we end up like that." She flicked her head at the body and her black hair shimmered as it swung.

This time, Tena glanced down and wished she hadn't. The man's face had been smashed in the fall, so at least she couldn't see his dead eyes. That was the worst part, looking into the eyes.

"There's four of us." Robbet said. He drew his belt-knife. He sharpened it every day and the blade glinted with a keen promise. "Brinn's got his fork. C'mon. Imagine if we get him. We'll get feasted at the Mountain Bells, they'll roast an ox for us and the ale won't stop."

Tena licked her lips. It had been a long while since she'd eaten proper meat. Shadom sometimes had some scraps to throw into a soup, but she never said where she got it. Kendra had been the first one to notice how there were no cats or dogs in Dammed Town. Kendra loved cats.

"We’ve got to find Kendra.” Tena said.

Robbet said. "Kendra’s probably with Shadom…”

“Shadom sent me to find her…” Tena started.

Robbet talked over her. “Think about it, Tena. We catch this traitor and bring him to the guards. We might even get a better place to sleep, moved out of Dammed Town. Imagine how much safer Kendra would be in one of the forts?"

"That's the last place I'd send my sister."

"Well, what about rations. We might get some proper food for a while, better supplies."

Brinn and Robbet were watching her. They'd made their mind up. Gehanna was staring at the funnel tower’s oak door, lips pursed thoughtfully. She was still making hers up.

“But Kendra…” A thought stopped Tena’s heart and her breath stuck in her throat.

Gehanna who gave voice to the thought, “What if Kendra’s in there?” Her blue eyes travelled up the height of the Funnel Tower, her mouth now set in a determined, decisive line.

Brinn nodded. Gehanna tucked her pearl beneath her dress and clenched her fists. Robbet handed his alder stick to Tena and found another for Gehanna. She broke it over her knee to make a stout cosh.

"Let's do it." Robbet raised the latch on the tower door, pushed it open with a foot, and led the way into the gloom.

Chapter 2

The Morning Before

 Tena glanced up at the Funnel Tower, the waterwheel grinding and whirring as always. The Funnel Tower was just that, a funnel, wider at the top than at the base. Water from the dam ran down an aqueduct and poured into the funnel, spinning the wheel, then it flowed out into the fields. That was why she'd brought Kendra here.

They'd passed three holdfasts and another famous mountain fortress on their journey, but Sarkapor was the only one big enough to grow its own food. Some stewards had never needed to leave, it was said, and generations had lived within the walls without ever seeing the world beyond.

Some of those stewards scared Kendra. Folk with buck teeth and low brows, some hunched, others with stares that went right through to your soul. Tena hurried down the path, melting snow turning it to slush.

She passed into the shade of the dam wall and followed the winding streets through the slum. Dammed Town, a settlement hammered together when the floods of refugees, Tena and Kendra among them, began streaming towards Sarkapor. An old man called out to her, his leer fouler than the three rotting teeth in his mouth. Tena grinned when an even rougher looking woman clapped him about the ears. She spied three boys throwing a pig skin around in an alley and she changed course.

"Oi, Tena!" One yelled out.

She froze. She could feel the blood racing through her, pounding against the handle of the basket as it cut into her hand. A part of her wanted to run, another part wanted to turn and face them, but she knew that, right now, neither part would win. She cursed herself as she waited, frozen, for the gang to close in.

"Where's that sister of yours?" Tomsen asked, his breath smelling worse than the night cart making its slow rounds down a nearby street.

"Yeah, haven't seen her for a while." Jorte said as he moved in front of her. "I miss those freckles. Tell me, does she have them all over?"

Even though they barely stretched above her head, right now the patchy wattle and daub walls of the alley seemed as stark as the stone battlements of the Lord's Keep. She had nowhere to go.

Tena trembled, her lips tight against each other. But still, she couldn't make herself move, even say anything.

A hand slid around her waist from behind, pressing her shapeless woollen dress tight against her body. "I never thought you'd do," came a raspy voice in her ear, "but the longer you keep that sister from us, the tastier you start to look."

Aldrecht had crept around the alleys to get behind her. She was trapped.

"Go on," said Jorte, “give us a taste.” His hand darted out and grabbed the neck of her dress. He clenched and Tena heard a stitch rip.

"Raaaaargh!" She screamed as she spun. Her wicker basket caught Jorte in the side the of the head and he staggered away from her. Aldrecht's hand vanished from around her waist and she turned. Her grip on the handle burned with fury, ready to lay Aldrecht out, ready to kill him.

Then, as quickly as it had been stoked, the fire charging her burned out. The memories of what she’d done last time that fire seared through her kept her up at night. Besides, she was only holding a wicker basket of yarn, not a sword forged for a warrior queen.

Aldrecht stood a few paces from her, smirking.

"You little scrag!" Jorte yelled and Tena turned back to him.

His hand came away from the side of his face marked with a tiny streak of blood. An equally tiny scratch marked his cheek.

"Blood for blood, aye boys."

"Blood for blood!" Tomsen and Aldrecht chanted together.

Jorte leaped towards her and Tena froze again, already cursing herself for fighting back, for not running, for not being able to do anything.

Something appeared in the air right in front of Jorte and he staggered backwards, clutching at his face, screaming. Blood poured from between Jorte’s fingers and his eyes were as large as eggs, tears running over his hands. He'd been smashed in the face with a pitchfork handle.

Tena turned to a yelp behind her and saw Aldrecht pressed up against the wall of a house. Gehanna had a fistful of his black hair and was grinding his nose into the rough daub. He screeched at her to stop and so she pressed harder. He clamped his lips shut to stop his teeth grating against the wall.  Without letting go she sent her booted foot into his right leg, then wrenched him around by the hair and sent him stumbling down the alley.

By then, Tomsen and Jorte were nothing more than two sets of foot falls echoing down the lane.

Brinn leaned out from the window of one of the hovels, big hands wrapped around the handle of his pitchfork. The tines were stuck down into the mud of the alley. "All good, Tena?" His blue eyes showed nothing, but she knew he cared.

Tena brushed her skirts off. She nodded. “How’d you get in there?”

Brinn looked over his shoulder into the hovel. He shrugged. “Door was open, no one’s home.”

"You gotta’ stick up to ‘em, girly." Gehanna said, flexing the hand she'd grabbed Aldrecht with. "They're boys. Mean ones, sure, but if you put your foot down they'll fall beneath it."

"Where are you two off to?" Tena asked.

"Sun's out. We're getting hats then heading to the fields." Gehanna brushed a finger down over her cheekbone with a delicate flourish. "Got to keep this skin white for Winter's End, or else none of the boys will ask me to dance."

Brinn shook his head and smiled at his sister. "You could be browner than an Aeszi and they'd still be lining up." He clambered out of the open window to stand beside them in the alley.

A flush of colour had risen to Gehanna's pale cheeks. Was she blushing?

"Oh Brinn, come here." She reached an arm out to bring him in for a hug.

Brinn blinked. "All I meant was, they’d be wanting grandma's pearl as dowry."

He grunted as Gehanna laid a solid punch into his upper arm, but he grinned all the same. Tena laughed.

Gehanna's hand rose to the necklace beneath her dress. "I'll take what I can get, I ‘spose."

"I'm going to check on Kendra." Tena said.

"You still heading to the stores later?" Gehanna asked when they came to a crossroads. Brinn was already turning towards the hovel they shared with their four younger siblings. They had been part of a big merchant family, once, but only the six of them had made it here.

Tena nodded. "I'll be there right after. Shadom needs yarn."

"Might see you there." Gehanna winked and was gone.

Tena hurried the rest of the way, checking around each corner and peeping down alleys. She soon came to a small square that offered a clear view up the dam wall. It towered a hundred feet above the town, huge grey stone blocks holding back a mountain river. Tena stepped from its shade into gloom of Shadom's workshop. A rat was perched atop the loom that dominated the room. It sat still as a statue, staring at her. She took another step and the rat took its chance, leaping down to the stale rushes on the floor to scurry past her out the door.

She picked her way past baskets of yarn and bundles of wool and grabbed some crude pegs stabbed into the daub as it set. She hoisted herself up into the rafters. There wasn’t a single straight line between the crooked beams of chestnut. The thatch pressed down above her, heavy with the last melting snow of winter. Hunching, Tena made her way onto the beech planks of the loft she and Kender slept.

"Kendra." Tena whispered as her eyes adjusted to the shade. Their blankets and furs were tucked away into a pile in the corner. Their bag of belongings that they had carried across half of Purseine was beside that, a few shawls, a knife, father's pewter ale mug and mother's set of whalebone needles. But no Kendra.

Shadom wasn't around either. Tena bit her lip. Perhaps Shadom had taken Kendra with her to help darn soldier's uniforms over at Ulfred's Gate. Tena rubbed her arms, trying to work out the chill that had just risen through her. If Kendra was with Shadom, the men would only stare. But they might come looking for her later.

"Tena!" Came a yell from outside.

Tena looked down to see Robbet standing in the door of the workshop. His face was flushed and he was panting.

"What?"

"Granosh's Gate is under attack. We're going to watch from the top of the wall."

Chapter 3

Into the Tower

 As many times as she’d seen it, Tena had never been inside the Funnel Tower before. She'd expected it to smell of grain and dust and the musty little things that grew in dark places, but all she could smell was the sweetness of the mountain river. It dropped down from a hole in the ceiling to smash against the paddles of the water wheel. The great piece turned, always, the gears spinning the millstone with a loud creak that drowned all sounds. Robbet closed the door and Tena didn't even hear it click. Aside from the wheel and millstones, the floor was empty, all grain long since cleared. Tena wasn’t sure whether the emptiness made it more eerie, or whether she was thankful there were no places for someone to hide. Either way, the shadows seemed darker here, stickier.

"What now?" Gehanna shouted as she tied her long hair up into two tails on the either side of her head. A beam of light cut through one of the high windows and set the pale hairs on her neck ablaze.

Robbet just pointed and led the way up the first ladder.

Gehanna went next, then Brinn waved Tena up. She reached out, fingers trembling, and grasped the rung and followed her friends.

While the ground floor was taken up by the mill, the first floor had been partitioned into storerooms, all wrapped around the chute that fed falling water to the paddles below. The wooden walls of the chute had started to rot through, and trails of moss and slime crawled down to the floor. They moved slowly, inching around the storerooms, poking at empty sacks, finding nothing. One room had a hole in the floor through which a block and pulley could be used to hoist and lower sacks. When Tena peered down there was only blackness, the floor below lost to them.

Robbet led them up the next ladder. The rungs were dusty on the edges, smooth and clear in the middle.

"Someone's been here." Tena whispered down to Gehanna.

"Of course." She said as she climbed through the trap set in the floor. "Or do you think the body we found came from the sky?"

Tena felt her cheeks heating up, but Robbet put a hand on her arm and leaned in. "Good work, Tena, keep those eyes open."

She smiled at him, and he grinned.

This floor was less daunting than the first, as if having survived the first level had emboldened her. There were the same empty rooms that made her eyes dart around, searching; the same grinding of the wheel and rushing of the water that hid all sounds except for those that made her jump; the same shadows and blind corners that she'd let someone else explore first. But now, rather than just grasping her club for something solid to cling to, she gripped it, ready to swing.

"What's this?" Brinn said. He was standing in front of a door to one of the storerooms. He rattled the handle. It was locked.

Robbet stepped up and rattled the handle. "Locked. Probably just a storeroom."

He walked past, already reaching for the ladder.

Brinn rapped on the door, first with his knuckle, then the haft of his pitchfork.

Robbet spun. "What are you doing?" His voice came out in a hiss.

Brinn's flat eyes turned to Robbet. "Checking."

"Checking for what? To see if the murderer will open up for you? No, no, no. You're giving us away, ruining our advantage."

"What's that?" Brinn said. His expression gave nothing away, but he stepped away from the door all the same.

"Surprise!" Robbet said. "Come on."

As the others followed Robbet up the ladder, Tena noticed that there was no dust on the door handle. She bent down. The dust in front of the door had been swept back in an arc. It had been opened, recently.

She jumped. She was alone. She could feel her palms going slick around the rough handle of her club and she hurried up the ladder.

On the third floor, all three of her friends were looking at something over in the corner. Tena stepped over to them and her length of alder clattered to the floor.

Gehenna and Brinn both glared at her and raised their fingers to their lips, but Robbet was just staring at the dissected man on the floor.

He had been stabbed countless times in the stomach, and long cuts carved their way across his chest and abdomen. Some wounds dug in as if seeking bones and organs. The pool of blood was turning sticky, grimy with the dust it had picked up as it flowed. Streaks of dark red gore clung to the walls where the man had fallen against them, grasping as he slid down.

Tena raised her hand to her mouth to hold it back, but whatever was left in her guts all came out. It came out like the water falling through the chute beside them to splatter over her boots and Gehanna's hose.

Robbet danced away from it, eyes burning, face screwed up in a scowl. Suddenly his face was his again, marked with a soft smile. He pulled out a square of rough spun cloth and gave the handkerchief to Tena.

"Let's go." Gehanna said and grabbed Tena by the hand.

"Where are you going?" Robbet asked.

"Out of here. We're getting the guard."

Tena could see the scowl rippling just beneath Robbet's smile. "What about the roast ox? The endless ale?"

"What about ending up like him?" Gehanna said.

Brinn shrugged. "I want the ale. I haven't had a drop of proper black stout since summer. I'll go with Robbet. You two get the guard. And I'll get you some more yarn when we're done, Tena."

Tena pursed her lips. She didn't like this.

Robbet stared at them for a moment longer, then nodded. Gehanna tugged at Tena's hand. Tena picked up her bile-splattered club and followed her down the ladder.

They went past the locked door, then down again, all in silence. The silence got worse the longer it lasted. Tena’s breath got shorter and shorter, her heart thumped in her ears like the drums calling the defenders to the walls, and she once caught herself shaking. She hadn't shaken since she and Kendra had left Allspock to come to Sarkapor.

"Gehanna." She whispered as they crossed the floor to the final ladder.

Gehanna cast a pale eye over her shoulder at Tena.

"Have you ever killed anyone?"

Gehanna stopped. One of her hands was tight around her own club, the other felt for the pearl beneath her dress. "Of course not. Gods know I've wanted to before. But I've never had a proper debt to be paid in blood, and I don't want to go to hell."

Tena nodded. "If someone was about to sell you and Brinn out to the Empire, would the gods see that as a blood debt worthy of repayment?"

Gehanna's eyes narrowed a little. "I'm not sure. Traitors are judged near as bad as thieves in Krolum's Eternal Court, so probably."

"How does the King of Contracts judge murderers?" Tena knew of course, but she wanted someone else to say it so she could believe in it more.

"Below traitors. Some murderers go to hell, but if Krolum decides it was a debt to be paid in blood, some are sent to the Golden Vale."

Tena sighed. "I know." Almost every night since fleeing Allspock she'd run through the order of sins that the King of Contracts would judge her for once she died. She hoped it would help her sleep, but it never did. All she could see when she closed her eyes was the bloody knife in her hands.

Gehanna stepped up close to her, so close her breasts nearly touched Tena's. Tena could see the creases in her lips, the shine of her rich black hair, the blue of her eyes, deep as the reservoir behind the dam. "Have you killed someone, Tena?"

Tena's lip trembled. Tears filled her eyes and she closed them against the flood she knew was coming. She couldn't say it. All she could do was nod.

Gehanna's warm body pressed up against Tena’s and strong arms wrapped around her. Tena felt herself sag, as if the weight she'd carried with her for a year had finally been eased, just for a moment.

Gehanna stroked her hair and whispered in her ear, "They deserved it, I do not doubt." She held Tena out at arm's length. Her hand reached up and a delicate finger took away a tear that was pooling in the corner of Tena’s eye. "Come on, Girly, let's get out of here."

Chapter 4

The Afternoon Before

 The stair to the wall zigzagged up the mountain side. The higher they went the wind’s fingers grew longer and stronger. It plucked at their hair, then their clothes, then threatened to pull them right off the stair. First, they rose above the thatched roofs of Dammed Town, then higher than the Funnel Towers that collected the water from the aqueducts.

"For hundreds of years," Robbet called to them as he led the way up, "the mountains that ring Sarkapor have been quarried and carved into walls and towers and gates. No army has ever crossed."

They were higher than the Funnel Tower now, and the wide bowl of the valley spread out beneath them. The bowl was perfect, as neat as if the gods had drawn a circle on the earth. The mountains stuck up in ridges around like the spikes on a king's crown, snowy caps glimmering in the sun like diamonds. Tena stole a glance at Ulfred's Gate all the way across the valley, and the Lord's Keep on its own island, but when she looked down at Dammed Town far below it felt like her stomach was trying to crawl up and out her mouth. She focused back on Gehanna's boots treading before her.

Then they were at the walls proper, huge slabs of raw stone cut from what had once been mountains. Robbet showed them a doorway, then a ladder that ended in a landing, and another ladder, on and on until they stood atop the wall and the whole world was beneath them.

She could see all of Sarkapor, and nearly over the walls on the far side near Ulfred's gate. The clouds seemed close enough to jump up and touch them. The reservoir piled up behind the dam, filling the valley. And along the edge of the water, men as small as beetles were setting up a strange contraption of wood.

"You said it was a small sortie." Tena said, eyes widening, her hands grasping at the weathered edge of the embrasure.

"It is." Robbet said.   

Tena tried to count how many beetles there were down there, but she couldn't go that high. She'd heard a word used for numbers like this before. Thousands, that was it.

"What's that?" Brinn asked, staring at the commotion. The contraption looked like a giant's see-saw, a long arm balanced over crossbeam.

"Mangonel." Robbet said. "They flick rocks."

"You said they'd have no engines!" Tena took a step back. She glanced behind her, terrified that she had stepped too close to the edge. But the top of the wall was wide enough for two carts to roll past one another and the stone blocks through which they peered rose to well above her head. The only way she’d fall was if she jumped. Or was thrown off.

"Can they get us here?" Gehanna asked. She hadn’t flinched. She’d stayed right where she was.

"No, no, no. They're going for the gate." He pointed further down the wall to where it sloped downwards into a mountain pass. While the walls were impressive, the forts that guarded the passes were another kettle of cat. Granosh’s Gate rose above the pass in tiers, each one fitted with a fortified balcony that bristled with archers and crossbowmen and engines of their own.

Tena could see now, the beetles down by the reservoir were approaching the beetles who manned the gate. The Imperials probably couldn't even see her, this high up.

"Whoah!" Brinn yelled as a haze of darkness left the gate with a rustle. It soared through the air then dropped down upon the Imperials. Arrows.

There was a flash of sunlight down on the beetles as they raised their shields above their heads, iron bands glinting. Some fell but the rest carried on, an entourage for the mangonel that had started to roll forwards. Now rocks were flying out of the gate, and parts of the tower were lost in white cannon smoke. Heartbeats later the crack and boom of the artillery reached them. Soldiers fell, but on they pressed.

"Why do they keep coming?" Tena said, tugging on Robbet's sleeve. "They'll all die. That mongrel won't do anything to the gates."

Robbet's smile was alive, pleasure crackling in his eyes. "Mangonel. It won't. Those gates are fire hardened oak as thick as a man’s leg is long, each board wrapped in iron."

The Imperials stopped, and after a moment of activity, men falling all around it, the mongrel's arm swung upwards so hard that the whole contraption jumped.

Robbet leaned out over the crenelations and peered out. "What are they sending? Too small to be rocks, and they're going over the gate. Heads maybe..."

Tena gulped.

"Look! Look!" Robbet screeched, his finger stabbing toward the mangonel. "Sorcerer!"

"One of ours or..." Brinn began but needn't finish.

They all watched, Tena, Brinn and Gehanna with open mouths, Robbet's lips moist with glee, as the mongrel was sent tumbling back through the Imperials. Nothing seemed to have hit it. One moment it was winding its arm back, the next it was crashing across the earth in a tangle of wood and screaming men.

That was it. The Imperials packed up, dragging their wounded back up to the tree line near the reservoir. They vanished amongst the pines.

Brinn cheered, Gehanna whooped, and Robbet scanned the battlefield with hungry eyes.

Tena didn't know what to think. They had repelled another attack. Sarkapor, and everyone in it, was safe. But her stomach was still trying to crawl out. Why had those men died? What had they sent over the gate? She turned away to look the other way, back out over the valley fortress. It was reassuring to see the familiar landscape, still and quiet. She took a deep breath, savouring the contrast to what she’d just seen. There was something in the sky, a flock of birds swarming high over the valley. Tena raised a hand to shield her eyes. The flock was splitting up, birds coasting out in all directions.

A chill settled on Tena's skin, even though sweat was still beading on her forehead from the hike up. She turned her hand and raised it out to the sky, holding it open beside one of the birds as it steadily got larger and darker. Its wings were nearly as wide as her hand, and it was still halfway across the valley. She gasped and pulled her hand back.

"Bats!" She shrieked and dropped below the battlement. She pressed her back up against the stone. The others did the same, ducking low and crawling across the wall to her.

Tena's hands were so tense her dress was scrunching up in her fingers. Her heart was beating so loud she was sure it would give them away. A vein was throbbing at Brinn's head, his hands wringing his pitchfork, as if searching for a grip that would let him defeat an enemy riding a giant bat.

Robbet popped his head up between the merlons for a moment and dropped back down, his finger pressed into his lip so hard that the faint hairs of his moustache wrapped around it.

A few more thunderous heartbeats and Tena heard the flap of its great wings, one, two, three, and a shadow rushed above them. The giant bat's claws could have scraped the top of the battlements if it had stretched out, but just as quickly as it appeared, it was over the wall.

Robbet was the first to his feet, then Gehnana, then Brinn. Then Tena. The giant bat beat its wings once more and coasted, sailing the breeze like a skiff on flat water. Its leathery wings were easily fifteen feet across, its black body wrapped in fur, the rider wrapped in sleek leather and strapped into the harness.

"What was that for?" Brinn asked. "Scouting?"

When no answer came, Tena, Gehanna and Brinn looked at Robbet. He was still watching the bat become a speck against the sky. They looked at one another and shrugged.

"I've got to head to the stores. One more fumble and Shadom says she'll put us out." Tena said, taking half a step back to the tower up which they'd come.

"I'll climb down with you." Gehanna put her arm through Tena's and pulled her along in such a way that it seemed like she had caught up to Tena.

Brinn tapped the haft of his pitchfork on the stone. "I've got fields to clear. First plough ain't far off."

Robbet scowled. "Spring's come too soon, if you ask me.” But he stepped in beside Brinn all the same.

As they climbed down the switchback stairs, the perfume of Dammed Town rose to greet them. Dried cow pat cook fires heating up for the day, the churn of mud as it moistened from melting snow and dried in the sun, the night carts making their rounds, and sometimes, like a ray of sunshine through storm clouds, they'd smell something delicious roasting or something sweet baking.

Near the last bend in the stair, Tena bent and picked something up. "What's this?"

She unrolled the piece of parchment as the others turned to her. There were some black marks scratched into the paper, marks Tena knew some people could turn into words. She passed it to Robbet.

He looked at it for a long time, but they all knew that Robbet's grandda was the only person in Dammed Town who could read.

"Go on," Brinn said in a gentle voice, "take it to your grandda."

Robbet stuffed the slip of parchment into his belt pouch and continued down without saying a word.

There were more notes at the base of the stairs. Some were snagged on breezes, darting and twisting like pixies up to no good. Others sunk into the mud, the black marks on them fading and blurring. Most were caught in the thatch roofs of Dammed Town.

"They've done this before." Tena said.

Gehanna nodded. "They send us lies. To scare us."

"Don't worry." Said Brinn. "You saw what happened at the gate. Orite. Get your hat, Gee, let's get to it."

Tena waved goodbye as they took the right fork into Dammed Town. She took the left towards the fort. Robbet fell in beside her.

"What a morning eh? Excitement down here, up there, even in the skies!"

Tena murmured but said nothing.

"Got your ration chit?" Robbet asked.

Tena dug down into the pouch she kept between her breasts, hanging from her neck by a hemp cord. She brandished the square wooden token as if it were a gold coin. "You bet."

"Grab some sausages would you instead? Or a bit of salt beef?"

Tena couldn't help but smile. "And lose the roof over our head?"

"You could come stay with me."

Tena blew him a raspberry. "Kendra and I are comfy enough just the two of us. Our furs are clean. We don't wanna share a lousy bed with all twelve of you. I've seen how you scratch."

Robbet laughed. "It's a big bloody bed."

They were passing the Funnel Tower, the rafters slick with melting icicles, the endless whir of the waterwheel within grating through the heavy oak doors. Robbet grabbed her by the elbow and spun her to a stop. His eyes were kind, but for some reason the look made her glance away.

“Tena. That thing you told me.”

“What thing?”
“At the Wretched Nag, when we’d all had too much to drink.”
Tena gulped, hoping it would stifle the tremble that was slithering up her spine like an adder wending through the grass. “What thing?”

Robbet pulled her in close. She could smell his breath, barley gruel and milk and something sweet. “You know. It made me wonder. How did it feel?”

Tena snatched her arm away. “It felt horrible. Still feels horrible.”

“Oh.” Robbet’s eyes fell, and his shoulders dropped an inch. “No matter then. I’ll see you later.”

Tena nodded. “Don’t tell anyone. Please.”

Robbet grinned and gave her an exaggerated wink. “On my life.”

Tena smiled and turned, continuing down the track past the willow beds and reed paddies. By the time she was crossing the meadows her talk with Robbet was forgotten, carried away on a breeze thick with the smell of spring. When she was sure there was no one about who could see, she skipped a few steps.

Chapter 5

Up the Tower

"Bull's balls." Gehanna hissed. She rattled the door. "It's locked from the outside."

"What?"

Gehanna rammed a shoulder into the solid pine boards. They rattled but didn't budge. "The latch must've dropped when Robbet shut them." Gehanna gave the doors a frustrated kick. "That lackless ball bag."

Tena turned, slowly, raising her club up in front of her like a sword. A boot appeared through the trap, finding purchase on the ladder. It was a large boot, splattered in her vomit.

Brinn clambered down the ladder.

"Find anything?" Gehanna asked.

Brinn shook his head. "Lost Robbet."

"What?" Tena frowned.

"How did you lose him?” Gehanna asked.

Brinn shrugged. “I was coming down a ladder, then he didn’t come after me. I poked my head up but he was gone.”

“We’ve got to find him!” Tena said, her breath coming short. “He’s up there with the murderer!”

Gehanna pursed her lips, the nodded. “She’s right. Come on.”

Brinn shrugged and put both hands back on the ladder.

“Brinn, where’s your pitchfork?” Tena asked.

Brinn grunted. “I gave it to Robbet to hold when I climbed down, and then it went missing with him.”

Tena handed Brinn her cudgel. He nodded to her, tucked it in his belt, and started climbing.

Tena went next, and Gehanna behind her.

They poked around the first floor above but there was no sign of Robbet, just the empty sacks and the block and tackle above the hole in the floor, a coil of rope waiting for the harvest’s first grain to get hauled up. They found nothing on the second floor. The locked door stared at Tena but Brinn led them on up.
“This is where I lost Robbet.” Brinn said. “And me pitchfork.”
“Let’s look around.” Said Gehanna. She took Tena by the hand and guided her around the corpse so that she didn’t have to look down at it.
This floor was smaller than the others, as the chute that carried the water down to the wheel had started widening into the funnel that stored the water from the dam. The walls leaned in over them. They moved carefully, peeking into the rooms that wrapped around the funnel. All were empty except for some barrels of pine pitch and a rack of tools for fixing leaks in the wooden funnel.
“Keep going up, then.” Gehanna said, shrugging.
The floor above was even more cramped and there were no rooms, just a gallery that ran around the funnel, dotted with small circular windows. Tena peered through one, barely large enough for her face to fit through. They were a long way up. She could see the dam rising above the town and the fields rolling out from the irrigation ditches. Tiny figurines moved on the winter-hardened fields, clearing them of any debris that might have hidden under the snow.
“Hey!” Tena yelled, her jaw pressing against the stone windowsill. “Hey!”

She screamed as someone ripped her back away from the window and clamped a huge, calloused hand over her mouth.
Brinn’s face was a handspan from hers, and even though he was staring into her eyes she saw nothing there, no flicker of life. Strange how she’d never thought it sinister, because right now her body had gone rigid under that gaze. “Shh.” He hissed. “What if the murderer is still here?”
“C’mon, Brinn.” Gehanna said, placing a slender hand on his shoulder. “Or you’ll scare her more than a murderer ever could.”
Brinn’s hand fell away from Tena’s mouth and he stepped back. “Sorry, Tena.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of a hand and brushed off her skirts. “It’s nothing. Let’s keep going.”
The floor above was almost entirely occupied by the funnel with only a small crawl space running around it. No one wanted to go fumbling through there in the dark on all fours, and so they went up the final ladder and out onto the roof.

A stone walkway ringed a pool of dark water thirty feet across that swirled down into the funnel. The aqueduct arched overhead and emptied into the pool from a height. Tena looked up at the underside of the towering stone construction as it ran back to the dam.

“Damn.” Gehanna said. “Look at all that.”
She and Brinn were standing at the edge of the walkway, a low wooden railing the only thing holding them back from the fall. Spreading out below them was Sarkapor. They could see Ulfred’s gate across the bowl to the south, the shanties of Dammed Town to the east, Lord’s Keep on its island up near the northern ridges, where the walls were highest, and all the forts and orchards and small villages that dotted the bowl of the valley and clung to its walls.
Tena barely glanced at the view.  “Let’s call for help.” Tena said. “We can stay up here and watch the hatch in case the murderer comes up.”
“What about Robbet?” Gehanna said.
Tena bit her lip, furious with her cowardice. What if Robbet was down there, trapped with the murderer? What if he was getting stabbed right now and they were just sitting around and…
“It’s that room, with the locked door.” She pulled open the trap and slid down without waiting for the others to follow.

Chapter 6

The Night Before

 The Wretched Nag stank. The smoldering peat in the braziers barely kept the last kiss of winter away, but still, the Nag was the warmest place in all Dammed Town, especially with this many bodies pressed in. The grimy daub of the walls couldn’t be seen behind the press of people with clay flagons in hand. Each bench was packed, people huddling low over their drinks beneath the sagging thatch roof.

Tena found their bench and slid in.

“Found that sister of yours?” Gehanna asked.

Tena nodded. “She was at Ulfred’s Gate with Shadom. I’m getting silly, spooking all the time.”

“She’ll be alright.” Gehanna smiled.

“Keep an eye on her, all the same.” Brinn said. He wasn’t smiling.

Robbet lurched out of the haze and dropped in beside Tena. The jug in his hand clattered onto the table a moment after, spilling a cup’s worth of ale.

“Oi!” Brinn’s big hand swiped in to grab the jug before anything worse could happen to their drinks. He filled his mug to the brim, then Gehanna’s, then Tena’s. He went to place the jug down.

Robbet glared at him.

Brinn grinned back. Then he filled Robbet’s cup.

Robbet snatched his cup and raised it in the air. “To Purseine! To the defenders at the gate!”

They all clinked cups, cracked clay cracking a little more, and tipped them up until dry. A few hearty grunts from nearby tables accompanied their toast. But there was no cheer, as usual when the Imperials had been repelled. The mood in the Nag was dour, as oppressive as the smoke, voices barely above a whisper, the songs thin and reedy.

“I never seen the Nag like this.” Tena said, staring around as Brinn filled their cups again. She licked her lips. It was no summer fruit stout, but dark ale was dark ale.

Robbet leaned in. “It’s the letters.”

“Letters?”

Gehanna inspected a fingernail. “The ones the bats dropped earlier. Ain’t you heard?” She picked beneath her nail with a thumb.

Tena shook her head.

Gehanna dropped her hand and she looked at the table. Brinn seemed mighty interested in the ale swimming in his mug.

Robbet leaned in and whispered in Tena’s ear, his breath thick with booze and smelling of onions. “They say Admiral Kote’s dead. Killed on the Black River.”

Tena frowned. “But Admiral Kote was the…”

Robbet nodded and his hand wrapped around her forearm. His grip was warm and firm. “Last of the Merchant Lords outside Sarkapor. Unless the Imperials break themselves on our walls, no help’s a’coming. Not anymore.”

Tena raised her cup higher, to hide her trembling lip. She had run across countless miles, dragging Kendra along the whole way, to come here, to be safe. And now…Now? What did she have?

Robbet threw his arm across her shoulders and pulled her in to him. Gehanna’s hand slid across the table and opened, just beside hers. Tena grasped it and Gehanna squeezed back. She thought she saw Brinn give her a smile, but it might have been the shadows and murk, ever changing in the Nag.

She breathed in deep, letting the peat smoke fill her lungs, hot and heavy, burning it all away. Brinn tapped his mug on the table and threw his head back, his throat working as he drank.

Gehanna let go of Tena’s hand, Robbet released her, and they all followed Brinn.

When the door banged open, the Nag was at its fullest. Every inch of stale rushes on the floor was covered with boots or stools or table legs. The door slammed into two men standing too close. They stumbled, drinks spilling, shouts and fists forming.

A hussar ducked through the door and straightened. Both men staggered back, pressing into the crowd, all fight wiped out of them by the horsehair mane on the hussar’s helmet. The silver helm shone somehow, even here in the gloom, the mane fanning out over wide shoulders. His shirt of woven leather strips fastened with steel discs was sinched around a narrow waist. Tena glanced at his moustached face and looked away again, her cheeks burning. Two more hussars stepped in behind him as the Nag fell silent, all eyes on the three soldiers.

“The enemy tried to attack Granosh’s Gate today.” The first Hussar boomed, his voice wrapping around every ear in the tavern. “They were repelled, pushed back, defeated.”

A lacklustre cheer followed his words, and Robbet raised his cup to the soldier.

“But that’s not all they tried. There was another attack. One of deception, of lies and trickery. Such is the way of Emperor, and the worms that follow him.”

“Is Kote dead?” Came a cry from somewhere at the back. There was a rustle as people moved uncomfortably in the tight quarters.

The Hussar’s eyes narrowed, and he scanned the room. His look made Tena think that he had memorised every face. “No.”

There were whispers, sighs of relief, growls of denial.

“Failing to weaken our defences, the worms have resorted to trying to weaken our resolve.”

Tena didn’t have to look to notice the looks passed around the room. Dumbfounded wide eyes, tight sceptical lips, and only a few hopeful smiles.

“Admiral Kote sails on, raiding the enemy’s supply lines, gnawing away at them until they will be crushed against our walls.”

He gave the room that stare again, seeming to look at everyone in turn. When his frost-blue eyes fell on her, Tena looked down into the stains of ale lining her cup, her blush hotter than the brazier beside her.

He flicked a hand up. A coin glinted between his fingers, silver as a full moon. Tena stared at it. It had been months since she’d seen even a disc of iron or copper, let alone silver. Ration chits were all she had, all anyone had. Squares crudely carved from oak, and recently, pine.

The hussar tossed the coin and all eyes followed it as it spun through the air to land on the bar top, twirling to a stop.

“To celebrate our victory, and those of Admiral Kote, let the ale flow all night.”

Cheers and toasts tore through the Nag. Ale was thrown through the air as people rushed to raise their cups, a brazier toppled and scattered the smouldering peat as someone lunged to join in, and Tena swore she saw the sagging roof billow up like a sheet in the wind as the crowd whooped and hollered.

A fiddle started playing somewhere near the back, belting out as merry a tune as she’d ever heard.

She held out her cup to Brinn, who refilled it. “All night?”

Her friends all held their cups out.

Beer was the surest way to forget, and if it was free, there was no way they were going to stop.

Chapter 7

Down the Tower

 A locked door can mean many things. It usually made Tena feel safe, knowing the latch was down on Shadom’s door at night. This one however, unpolished boards dusky and coarse, seemed to push her away. She knew she needed to open it, but she was terrified of doing so, of what it might reveal.

Her head snapped to the side. Where were the others? She heard a floorboard bounce on the floor above her, then the trap slammed shut with a bang.

She was alone.

Then came a shout, or a scream, or both.

Tena took a step back, away from the ladder, hands balled into small, shivering fists. Her mouth dropped open as a patch of darkness spread around the edge of the trapdoor, the square of shadow thickening and pooling. A drop fell away and Tena watched it as if time had slowed around her. It seemed to take years, the droplet floating towards the dusty floor, its deep red lustre glittering in a single bar of sunlight that lanced through the cracks in a boarded-up window.

The speck of blood splattered, and time caught up to Tena, the world around her reeling back into focus. She leaped over the stain and stormed up the ladder. She ignored the warn stickiness running down her hands as she heaved against the trapdoor, and she yelled as it swung open.

The spirit of her brash charge drained from her, dripping down the ladder along with Gehanna’s blood. Her friend was lying on the floor, her open eyes level with Tena’s. She had fallen right beside the door, her life already leaked out from around Brinn’s pitchfork. The tool was still stuck in her, sagging off on an angle, the tines embedded in her side all the way to the handle.
Tena raised a hand to her mouth, a scream gurgling somewhere at the back of her throat, when a shadow moved behind Gehanna’s body. Tena caught the flash of flat, blue eyes, cold and lifeless as a frozen-over pond. She dropped, sliding down the ladder. She let the trap slam shut after her and warm flecks of Gehanna’s blood splattered her cheeks.

Pain shot through her knee when she landed but she didn’t make a sound. Tena hopped to the next trapdoor, wiping the warm wetness from her face, and slung herself down.

“Tena!” Came a dull yell from somewhere above. Brinn. He was after her.

A sob wracked her as the grinding of the mechanism and rush of the water in the funnel got louder. She pulled the trap shut, but before she let go of the ring a rattle ran through the door. Then it started to pull against her. She clung to the iron ring as it inched open.

Brinn could carry calves across the valley of Sarkapor. While people said Kendra was slender, Tena had always been called skinny. She needed more weight to hold the door closed. She kicked off from the ladder and hung there, her whole weight fighting to keep the door shut.

Her swinging toes flicked the first rung of the ladder. A moment later they kicked the second. Tena looked up and could see the trap lifting. A crack appeared around the square door.

“Tena!” Brinn said again, his voice as low and steady, as always. How had she not noticed it before? She had always seen Brinn as a rock, hard and slow and sure. Now the thought of his flat smile, his empty stare, made her skin crawl.

“Tena, help…”

Tena let go of the ring and yelped when fresh pain shot through her knee. She heard the door swing open above her, but her hands were already around the rope hanging from the block and tackle. She swung out into space, then screamed as she dropped through the floor, the rope whirring as it uncoiled and slid through the greased loop.

Tena clutched the rope tighter as she plummeted, her scream dead in her throat.

Chapter 8

That Morning

  was stuffed with all Shadom’s offcuts and loose threads, so while a bit lumpy it wasn’t near as scratchy as straw. Tena’s hand moved to her head as if through water, slow and unsure. Her stomach felt hollowed out, empty and starving but full of sick. She retched and managed to keep it in. The movement beat pain like a hammer on the anvil of the back of her skull. She ignored it, crawling to the slop bucket and emptying her stomach in strands of sickly-sweet burning ichor. She coughed up the last of it and rolled onto her back, gasping.

“That’s it, girl, out and out.” Came a full, croaky voice from somewhere down in the shop.

Tena could smell burning chaga in the air. She retched again then slid to the edge of the loft. Shadom was cranking her spinning wheel, one foot mercilessly pounding the pedal as her fat fingers, deceptively dexterous, passed wool through the bobbin. She turned to look up at Tena, her hands and feet not slowing, her humongous bun of black hair bobbing and swaying.

“’Bout time one of you was up.” Shadom said, her pipe bouncing between her teeth to leave trails of chaga smoke that wafted up into oblivion. “I need something run to Granosh’s.”

Something scratched at Tena, a cold tickle at the back of her neck, a tug that made her frown. She turned her head, squinting into the gloomy loft.

“One of us? Where’s Kendra?” She croaked.

The peddling and passing paused for the barest moment, so quick that if Tena wasn’t familiar with Shadom’s mastery she wouldn’t have noticed. “Not up there sleeping in with you?”

Tena shook her head, a new kind of sick finding its way into her stomach. This one didn’t make her retch though. It made her grab her cloak and scramble down the pegs to the shop floor.

Shadom’s rhythm was back, the ember in her pipe glowing brighter and brighter as her huge lungs drew. “Go find her, girl.” Shadom’s blessing was followed with a thick cloud of white smoke, like a priest swinging a censer around an offering pit.

Tena found Robbet watching the knacker at his work. The short stump of a man had a grey scarf wrapped around his face and was busy dropping a gigantic cleaver through the leg of a horse. His knuckles bulged from a hard bed of sinew, his hand clawed around the cleaver's handle as if he never let it go. Where the rest of the horse was, Tena couldn't see, but some of the pieces littering the ground of the yard gave her a hint.

Tena walked up to Robbet, her hand held over her nose to cover the rank smell. It made her already tender stomach roll like a pot on the boil.

When she told him Kender was missing, he frowned and stared a puddle of mud between her feet.

“Robbet.” She nudged him with an elbow.

He shook his head and nodded. “Let’s get Gee and Brinn, then go looking.”

Tena turned down the lane that would take them to the sibling’s hut, but she felt Robbet’s hand on her shoulder. His fingers dug in.

“They’re out in the fields. Near the Funnel Tower.”

Tena took off at a run, Robbet close behind her.

Chapter 9

To the Top of the Tower

The rope snapped taught, and Tena jolted in the air, swinging and bouncing like a puppet with its strings cut. Her scream was reborn as a wail that didn’t end until she stopped swinging. She looked down. Her feet were a step off the flagstones of the ground floor. She looked up. The rope vanished into shadow.

A laugh poured through that hole, a high-pitched chuckle that dug into her mind, chilling, and the rope dropped.

Tena landed heavily and shifted the weight off her sore knee. Her eyes darted to the door, barred shut, then to the mechanism, grinding away. She jumped when something snaked over her boot. It was the rope, sliding over the floor as it was pulled back up by Brinn. Her heart thundered in her ears, faster than the wingbeats of a swallow, as she watched the rope’s end sway through the air until it hid away in the shadow above.

Two boots appeared through the opening, pinched around the rope. Then they started to lower. Unlike Tena’s drop, this was controlled and steady. Brinn must be using his hands to pass the rope through the block, easing himself down. No matter the control or the steadiness, it was too fast for Tena.

She scooted across the floor, wincing with each step. When she reached the ladder, she glanced backwards and gasped. The shadow that was Brinn was already halfway down, getting close enough to jump the rest of the way. She threw herself up, hands slapping against the rungs. She launched herself through the trap and slammed it shut.

Tena was looking over her shoulder, eyes on the trapdoor, when she tripped over something that hadn’t been here before.

She stumbled, arms windmilling, then she fell hard against the floorboards. She squeezed her eyes together and groaned as she pushed herself up.

Brinn lay at her feet, his huge form curled up, knees hugged to chest. His coat was slick and red, a pool forming beneath him. Tena retched, doubling over, but she had emptied her hollow stomach twice today and only a long tendril of slime came out. She coughed and spat, but it did nothing to ease the sinking feeling that was rising from her guts, filling her. And the trapdoor she had just come through was creaking open.

Tena climbed. Voices in her head told her many things, to hide, or take the pitchfork out from Gehanna’s body, but none of them could convince Tena. Running is better than hiding. She’d learned that the hard way.

Finally, she broke from the stifling tomb that the Funnel Tower had become and stood on the thin walkway encircling the swirling pool of water as it gurgled down into the funnel. The air was clean up here. A fresh wind blew in from the north and the water from the aqueduct fell with a sparkle. The sun burned down on her through a gap in the smoky white clouds, pushing away some of the chill.
Tena backed around the walkway, putting herself as far from the trapdoor as she could. She waited. She looked over the parapet, at the fields and orchards and forts, at the fall that would break every bone in her body. She inched back towards the trapdoor, a handful of breaths between each step, unsure what to do when she reached it.

Then it creaked.

It swung up and open, and Kendra stepped out onto the walkway.

Chapter 10

The Year Before

 The thing with friends is that you’re supposed to think you can trust them, and often you do. But Tena was learning that you could never be sure.

“I’ll tell them.” Bigette stood in the doorway, the coils of her braids cutting her silhouette into that of a helmed warrior. The moon threw white light around her and cast her shadow long into the house. Tena had dreamed something like this before, and she had woken up soaked through and shivering.

“Don’t.” Tena hissed, turning away from her oldest friend to keep stuffing things into the sack. Mother’s whalebone needles, half a loaf of bread, a knife…

“It’s over, Tena.” Bigette said, spreading her arms to the doorframe as if to remind Tena that she wasn’t going anywhere. “We can’t win. Purseine is done. The Empire…”

“Sarkapor stands.” Tena said, her voice quiet but steady. She’d always stood in Bigette’s big shadow. She stepped out of it, reaching for father’s pewter cup on the mantlepiece above a fire that was hissing its last.

“It’ll fall.”

Tena could hear the sneer on Bigette’s lips.

“If we go over, now, they’ll let us live like normal. We’ll work and get paid all the same.”

Tena waved her hand as if a gnat was trying to bite her ear. “That’s what they say. The Imperial worm has got inside your head, Bigette, you’re listening to their lies.”

Bigette screeched and rolled into the room. Kendra cried out and dropped the sack of furs and cloaks.

Tena turned as Bigette’s square hand clapped across the side of her head, squashing any gnats that might have been there. Tena stumbled, dropped her sack, then fell to the floor.

Screams came from outside, somewhere down the road. Then the crackle of flames. More shouts. Screams. Then laughter.

Bigette took a step back, her hands rolling into fists. “You wouldn’t leave me, would you Tena? If we go together, all of us, they’ll treat us nice and let us go back to normal.”

Tena staggered up onto one knee, her hand pressed against the sting pulsing under the skin of her face.

With a loud cheer the crackle of flames whoomphed as the miller’s thatch roof went up. More laughter, fewer screams. Sobbing now. Mad orange light scattered through the room, forcing its way between the shutters.

“They’ll make us fill in the offering pits. Krolum will send us all to hell.” Tena said, unsure what to do. Bigette had never hit her before. Her words had hurt more than this, but Tena could just take those curses in and let them settle. Once they were still, they didn’t cut so much. But now? Tena’s face still stung, and she could taste warm blood in her mouth.

“Sod Krolum.” Bigette said.

Tena gasped. Kendra hissed. Tena ground her teeth and stepped over the dropped sack towards her oldest friend. “Let us go.”

Wild fingers of red light clawed at one side of Bigette’s face, the night impossibly dark behind her. The sobbing outside had become screams again, crisp and rhythmic. Someone was being beaten.

“You can’t leave me.” Bigette said in a hoarse whisper, her eyes black shadows. “We’re all staying here, together.”

Tena looked over her shoulder. Kendra had already grabbed Tena’s sack up from the floor and was waiting on the balls of her feet. Good girl.

“Move, Bigette. Now.” Tena’s voice felt strange in her throat, as if someone else, her father maybe, had reached back from the Golden Vale and given her his strength, his need to be obeyed. She felt as surprised as Bigette looked. She had never spoken to her friend like that before. She had always bowed her head and followed along in Bigette’s big shadow.

A lick of light from the miller’s burning cottage flickered across Bigette’s eyes. She pulled in breath, her breasts rising, and yelled, “Over here! They’re running…”

Tena’s fist split Bigette’s yell, and a tooth.

Bigette stared at Tena, an eye twitching. She spat and it splattered dark across the wall. Tena couldn’t see her friend anymore, Bigette had changed. A monster stood in her place, face contorted, eyes small and narrow, her hands knotting with furious sinew. She swept into the house and threw her hands around Tena’s throat. The impact burned, and before Tena could try and draw breath through Bigette’s grip she had been slammed up against a wall. Her head snapped against the daub and the world spun.

“You belong with me.” Bigette whispered. Then she yelled again, louder than before, “Here! They’re running!”

There was movement behind Bigette, then she howled and let go. Tena slid to her knees, gasping. The world still rolled and tilted, as if she were on a raft that wouldn’t stop rocking.

She heard a yelp and looked up. Bigette had a twisted fistful of Kendra’s hair in one hand. Her other hand was rising, her fist as thick and solid as a ham. It fell and Kendra screamed, dropping the sack. Its contents spilled across the floor.

Tena staggered forwards on all fours. Her hand brushed something, and she grabbed it. Bigette’s huge fist rose again, Kender cowering beneath it. Tena pounced, the knife in her hand leading the way.  

Chapter 11

On Top of the Tower

 Tena had never made a sound like this before. She had screamed from the bottom of her guts, cried until her hands shook and her feet curled. But this sound, half moan, half growl, seemed to unwind from her spine, rolling up through her as Kendra was goaded up on the walkway on the points of Brinn’s pitchfork. It was still wet and red with Gehanna’s blood.

Kendra hunched over, hobbling, her bedclothes clutched in close around her. Her hands, usually so delicate, looked bony, exposed and feeble. Dark hair that should’ve caught the sun in a vital shimmer seemed to soak the light up like knotted shadows. She looked at Tena, and past the tired black bags and the fear, there was the glimmer of a smile in her sky-blue eyes. Was that hope, misplaced from the times Tena had managed to save her before?

Tena clipped her growl with the clack of her teeth. They ground together as Robbet emerged, the pitchfork under one arm, sticky stains stretching up his arms and splattered across his shirt. With the pitchfork, he goaded Kendra away from Tena so that he stood between the sisters. He looked at Tena and smiled.

“Finally, Tena.”

“Let. Her. Go.” Tena said, the words forcing between her teeth, straining to get out.

“There’s nowhere to go.”

“Let us down.”
“The door is barred from the outside, and the millers won’t be missed until nightfall.” He looked up at the low sun, barely approaching noon.

Tena saw his hands around the pitchfork, the muscles tensed in his forearm, the blood. “How could you, Robbet? Brinn and Gehanna. The others.” Kendra, shivering in her shift. “My sister.”

“There’s nowhere to go, Tena, no choices left. Sarkapor will fall.”

“You said it can’t, the walls, the gates, the mongrels…”

Robbet scoffed and shook his head. “Mangonels. It’s not enough. Kote is dead. We’re just rotting in here.”

Tena took a step forward, her hands itching. “How could you…”

Robbet’s face cracked, tears beading in the corner of his eyes as his lips twisted. He looked like one of the beggars that gathered in the squares in winter, their last desperate plea before starvation. “I made the choice for them, not the Imperials.” He jabbed the pitchfork at Kendra, who took a step back. A step closer to Tena, the long way around the walkway. She took another.

“They’d let us go, back to our homes, to live as we did.” Tena said.

Robbet’s begging vanished, swallowed by a rage that rippled across his jaw and summoned a tendon at his temple. “You believe that? You’d all be locked up in barrack brothels, and me and Brinn would be sent to the mines. Or turned into arrow fodder for the Emperor’s next conquest.”

Tena frowned. She had seen the slaves kept penned up on the island beside Lord’s Keep. Men taken from Rhayne and Wiph and even Yont, let out each day to repair the defences, pick stones from the fields, and split firewood. She had seen men collapse at their task, and still the lashes fell, stopping only for the body to be bundled up and dropped in a pit. While she hadn’t seen them, she’d heard Shadom talk of the women, from Rhayne and Wiph, even Yont and Aesz, kept in the depths of the forts. Women who didn’t see the light of day, fed and watered just enough to stay attractive to the soldiers. That was why Shadom told Tena to keep Kendra close.

Kendra took another step. Tena gasped, a sob clattering her teeth apart. She had failed Kendra. Had Robbet… Tena shook her head and bit down again. “Did he hurt you?” She asked.

Kendra shook her head. “That room was cold, but that’s all…

Robbet’s head twisted to look at Tena on an angle. “I’m saving you all from them.” He let go of the pitchfork with one hand to stab a finger out over the parapet and distant walls to where the Imperial army camped. The forks dropped to clang against the stone walkway, the handle still gripped in his other hand.

Tena could feel her brows lowering, confusion bunching up between them. “The Empire takes no slaves.”

“They take no gods too. Would you rather be a slave in life and sit in the Golden Vale, or a king destined for hell?”

“Are they saving us?”

Robbet sneered. “A worm has got inside your head Tena.” He spat into the swirling whirlpool of water as it drained down the funnel to feed the mechanism. As if his saliva had carried his anger away, his face fell, hurt again. “I thought you’d understand, Tena. You know what it’s like.”

“Know what what’s like?”

He clenched his gory hand, watching as a drop of blood squeezed out between his fingers. “To make the final choice for someone. You told me about it, that night at the Nag. I’ve thought about it every day since.”

Tena’s stomach twisted on itself. “I made you do…this?” Her knees felt weak. One started to shake, and she had to step backwards to stop from falling. She reached out to steady herself, but her fingers grasped at air, at nothing.

“We’re like the water wheel, Tena, cranking around each day, nowhere to go, grinding with no end in sight. There’re no options, no choices left.”

“But…this? Me?” Tena pointed with her raised hand at the blood on the pitchfork, on his hands and clothes.

“Death comes for us all, doesn’t it? But to be the one who chooses when, to make it happen. What greater choice is there, to decide death?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, the lines ebbing from his face, his jaw going slack. He looked at Tena and the sparkle in his gaze made her fumble a step backward. He let go of the pitchfork, the handle clattering to the floor, and turned to Tena, facing her. Tears had formed in his eyes again. “Thank you, Tena.” He took a step forward.

Tena glanced at Kendra. She was moving, slowly, carefully, her delicate hands clenched, determined. Good girl. Tena took a breath. It came fast and ragged, like a wind tearing over mountain peaks. She stepped towards Robbet and took another breath. This one filled her, her lungs like the iron bellows pumped by slaves in the fort forges. She and Robbet were only a few paces apart now.

She smiled. Her cheeks twitched, her lips felt like they were going to split with the effort, but she made herself smile. “How does it feel?”

His mouth quivered, a tear making its way down his cheek, slowly. He reached for her.

“You’ve done it, Robbet, you understand.” She said, her voice a hoarse whisper. Something in her screamed to stop, and she froze like she always did, arms halfway up.

A dangerous light flickered across Robbet’s eyes, but before Tena could curse herself, she stepped in and slid her arms around Robbet’s chest, their passage made smooth with her friends’ blood.

Robbet flinched for a moment, but when Tena’s hands met behind his back she felt him melt, as if her tenderness had taken all the pain from him.

The front of her dress was getting damp, thick warm blood soaking through the wool. Through it, she could feel her heart beating against his chest. It was too loud, too fast. It would give her away.

She felt his body go rigid again, tightening up like a snare being set. His arms grated up her back, his fingers digging in. They wormed through her hair. She pulled him closer, trying to squeeze the tension from him, but it only made his hands crawl faster. She tried to let go but his hands wrapped around her neck to grasp her throat. He looked down into her face. She had thought Brinn’s eyes unsettling, cold and flat, showing nothing. But Robbet’s were worse. They blazed, the flames of madness screaming to scorch everything away. She could feel the heat from them, her cheeks burning.

His hands tightened, and her wheeze came out with a wet grating sound.

Robbet gasped and threw his head back, his back arching. His grip loosened and Tena sucked in air.

Good girl.

Kendra took a step back, letting go of the pitchfork. Robbet’s hands fell away from Tena. He whined and twisted, the pitchfork handle scraping across the walkway. Two tines had punctured his lower back while the third had missed flesh and poked through his shirt. Dark pools were running down his breeches, and Tena smiled. It was his blood.

He let out a scream as his hands scrabbled to grasp the tines. One hand found purchase and tried to pull, but that only twisted the other. He screamed more. The sound wrapped itself around something in the centre of Tena’s chest and yanked. He wailed again and she gasped at the pain it caused her.

Tena cursed herself for being weak, for not being able to not care, and she reached out. She grabbed the pitchfork handle and slid it from Robbet’s body. He didn’t seem to notice her pity, or the pitchfork clattering to the walkway. He lurched towards Kendra as she shuffled back, shrinking lower with each step, her arms bunched up in front of her chest. Something flashed in Robbet’s hand. His knife, sharpened each morning until, as Robbet would say, you can cut the wind’s belly and hear it scream.

Tena hadn’t been able to stand by hearing Robbet’s pain, but what if he couldn’t scream? She dashed forwards and balled into his side. The impact knocked the breath from her and she staggered, slipping on the wet walkway, blood greasing the worn soles of her boots. Robbet’s knife disappeared in the whirling white water of the funnel. His arms windmilled as he teetered, his toes on the edge of the walkway. Then he fell and was swept away from them in a spiral, arms flapping and slapping against the surface.

Tena fell to one knee, cracking it hard on the moss-riddled stone. She felt a leg slip into the current, pulling her in, and her gasp was frozen in her throat by the chill of the mountain river. She scratched at the walkway but down she slid. The water clutched at her legs and waist, then her chest, finding purchase in the heavy wool of her dress and hose. It tugged her deeper.

She felt Kendra’s small hand wrap around hers and tighten.

Something else grabbed her ankle deep in the water and her scream was filled with sweet river water as Robbet dragged her under. The world turned the blue of the sea, as dark as night and more unforgiving. She spun and writhed, slipping against the wooden sides of the funnel, worn smooth with the passage of water and layers of slime. Everything vanished but for the inevitable drag of the water and her breath, diminishing with each passing moment and each futile movement.

That eternity ended when her feet pressed against something. The water’s grip seemed to lessen. She kicked her foot out and the thing beneath her rocked. The water was no longer rushing. Its whorl was slowing, and instead of the endless roar of moving water, she could hear the splash and chortle of falling water breaking the surface. The surface! She could see light up there, glimmering through a rippling skin to the world of air and life. She pushed off and raked her hands through the water.
Tena’s lungs were no longer fort forge bellows. They were leaking, drained, they gave her muscles nothing as they screeched to suck in, needing to be refilled. She swallowed a mouthful of water and the surface, so breakable, drifted out of reach again.

Something pierced the skin, a line of darkness thrusting towards her. She reached out and seized it. It pulled against her grip, and she scrabbled to hold on. Then the light rushed towards her.

Tena coughed and hacked, her lungs aching as she squeezed water from them. Kendra dropped the other end of the pitchfork, Tena still clutching the handle, and started thumping Tena on the back. Another gout of spit-stained water splashed over her hands and Tena breathed. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the sky as it fed her air.

“C’mon,” Kendra whispered as she rubbed Tena’s hands, “you’re shivering. There’re furs in that room.”

“Get me…” Tena coughed, “get me up.”

They stood, Kendra beneath Tena’s arm, taking her weight. They took a step back. Water was slowly creeping up over the walkway. The whirlpool in the funnel had stopped and now the water falling from the aqueduct was filling it over the brim. Tena peered through the water and smiled. Robbet’s body was wavering down there at the bottom of the funnel, his legs down the chute, his arms and head the plug that had saved Tena.

Tena looked down at her hands, white and wrinkled, shaking like a sieve. She could feel the warmth though, the stickiness of friend’s blood, a stickiness that would never come off. She leaned on Kendra, then crumpled, her little sister struggling to hold her up. But Tena had nothing left except the tears that fell. They poured like the mountain river, cascading from her cheeks to fall into the funnel.

“C’mon,” Kendra said when Tena’s tears had run dry, “we’ve got to warm up.”

Tena nodded and it was like her head was swaying in the wind, attached to her body by will alone.

Kendra stopped. 

“What?” Tena mumbled.

“Bells…” Kendra said. She gasped, nearly dropping Tena.

Tena looked up towards Ulfred’s Gate. Hartin, the steel bell, was clanging out across Sarkapor with his stark clean peal. But Hartin meant…

Across the valley, a crack formed down the middle of the giant gate. A clean bright line, as if split by light. The line widened, showing the hills beyond. Wider still, and the Imperial encampment was revealed, a swarming, smoking blight that covered the horizon. Wider, and the first sun of spring glinted and glittered on points that shone amid a seething mass that crawled through the opening. Points of spear heads and helm tips and shield straps.

Hartin, the bell of surrender.

Sarkapor had fallen.

Let me know what you reckon!