CHAPTER NINETEEN: SWITCHEROO
You mortals huff and whine and gnash and howl
in spite of winning what you've long sought out!
Balk not when I peruse what you've cast off,
nor when I take for mine your old betrothed.
-Astra Stargazer, from 'The Enchanted Wedding'
Thea's first insight, courtesy of Clarisse, was that if Bestel Myrdon and his army were marching on, invading, or occupying Rouentz, then they definitely wouldn't be in Nortsair. He would leave some significant forces behind to defend the place, no doubt, but his most powerful, most useful assets couldn't be there. Since they already knew of an underground passage to Nortsair, all they had to do was go there and capture the city – not the easiest thing in the world to do, but easier than fighting his army on their terms. Thea's second insight, also courtesy of Clarisse, was that Myrdon wouldn't look for the townsfolk if he thought them all dead. Again, not the easiest thing in the world, but Thea had an idea of how it might be done.
When Heath had caused a distraction at Purgistok, it had been by (after shooting arrows from out of nowhere) leaping onto the high stage and tossing the 'head' of Igna Battle-Blessed in front of Rurik Koenig. Except he hadn't actually tossed a head of any type... rather, he'd somehow convinced everybody present that a loose bundle of smelly rags was the decapitated head of the jarl. Even Thea, who managed to see through most illusions, had been fooled. Looking back in her near-perfect memory, she could rememer being convinced that it as Igna's head while also clearly remembering the smelly rags – all part of Robin Brindle-hair's powers as trickster, she supposed.
It was evening when Heath awoke from his medicine-induced slumber, groggily shifting from his bed and limping about. When Thea was called up to see him, Heath was still pale and the numerous wounds from which he'd had his life nearly sucked out were scabbing off to pink skin below. He and Larian should have died, but it seemed that Scions, even those without obviously superhuman strength and resilience, could take a lot more than most people. Coupled with Larian's amazing alchemy, both of them were healing at many times the ordinary rate... which, in Heath's case, meant he could barely hobble down the stairs to eat some stew. Thea rushed in to see him, giving him a solid hug, sloshing stew across the table, and then disengaging when Heath started to wince in pain – quite possibly from the hot soup that had just sloshed over his hand and not the crushing strength of the hug.
Thea told him her plan, emphasizing that they had, at most, a day and a half to get everything ready. Heath blew on a spoonful of piping stew and considered the plan before plucking two chunks of chicken out of the broth and holding them up for Thea to see.
"This is a diamond," Heath said, and he dropped it to his plate – but it was still just a chunk of chicken. "This is a bloody eyeball," he said, and then dropped the second piece. It hit the plate with a dull splat and, sure enough, there was a bloody eyeball sitting smack-dab in the middle of a big bloody spatter... only, in retrospect, Thea could also see that it was only a chunk of chicken in the middle of a little broth puddle. Then he reached into his pouch and pulled out two items: "This is a diamond," he said, producing a glittering jewel the size of a finger joint. "And this is a bloody eyeball," he said, pulling out a pebble. Of course, they were both pebbles.
"So you're saying you can make people see what they might reasonably expect to see?"
He shrugged. "I guess that's it. I can make somebody think they've found buried treasure, but not buried apple pie, and it helps a lot if they already expect to see whatever I've set out for them."
"Can you teach me how to do it?" Thea asked – a big ask, she was sure.
Heath shrugged again. "You just saw me do it twice. It's like sleight of hand massively and magically magnified. Did you see what I did, exactly?"
Thea had been paying very close attention, and she'd caught nothing unusual in Heath's movements. Well... not much. There's been a subtle surety to it, in the way he treated the objects like what he wanted them to be. She took one of the pewter spoons off the table and held it reverentially, whispering:
"This spoon is golden."
The spoon was still pewter, of course. It didn't change. Except, when she looked up to tell Heath that it hadn't worked, she saw it glint golden in the corner of her vision. Looking back, she saw the pewter spoon, but she could tell there was something vaguely golden about it. She'd done something with it, but it was a lot weaker than whatever Heath had done.
"I think you're going to have to do it... if you're up for it, we'll do it tomorrow morning. I'll get the Soenmen to put runes and broken banners around the place. We'll scatter weapons and broken things around town, and then go about putting fake bodies and damaged buildings everywhere. I wish I could do it for you, but I think that's a one-of-a-kind talent."
Heath nodded. "I suppose I'll have to be up for it."
"That's the spirit," Thea chuckled. She patted his shoulder. "That's the burden of being irreplaceable."
"Very true," he replied. He blew on another spoonful of stew, considering Thea in the lantern's light. "None of us are replaceable. You least of all..."
Thea laughed. "Me? What can I do that any one of the rest of you can't do ten times better?"
"Aside from bringing the dead back to life?"
"That's a pretty big one, I guess," Thea allowed. "But I've only done that once."
"You're the strongest of all of us," Heath said quietly. "Not in a literal sense. Obviously, Cano's very, very strong. I'm very fast and tricky. Larian's very smart and probably the world's greatest healer. And you can learn how to do any of the things that anybody else does... even the magical things, I think. You didn't make a fake golden spoon, but I don't think you were as far off as you might've guessed..."
"How can I learn to do something I can't even see?"
"You'll learn how to see it," Heath said after a moment. He took Thea's hand. His flesh was clammy, but his grip was surprisingly firm. "I'm serious. We need you. This whole town does. Hells, probably the whole world does. When you go out on this mad plan of yours, keep yourself safe, because we can't win without you."
Thea blushed at that – and part of her wanted to scream at Heath for dropping such a huge responsibility on her lap. In all likelihood, without all five of them working together, they would have all been killed what felt like ages ago at the masquerade and in their subsequent escape from Nortsair... which was exactly where she was headed back. Thea leaned forward and kissed Heath's forehead, her gaze meeting his forest-green eyes as she backed away.
"Rest up," she said.
+++++
Thea wouldn't have expected that the hardest part about pulling off her plan would be getting the Soenmen to go into the tunnels. When she told them they'd be going on a glorious raid into enemy territory, they'd been ecstatic. They weren't Rorik's savage elite, but all of them were experienced and enthusiastic fighters. And when she'd told them they'd sneak into Nortsair through the underground, they fast devolved into grumbling.
"Look, I realize it's sneaky," Thea told them. "But we don't have enough to frontally assault Nortsair - not even close."
"That's not it, Thea Jarl," Farn Surestrike said - and Farn using her full title meant it was a serious matter.
"What is it, then? It's not the danger of it..."
"The underground, milady. That's no proper place to go - it's the realm of the dishonored dead, who roam, unclaimed by even Shivlheim. To fight the dishonored dead risks a warrior's place in Sturmgard."
Thea didn't bother to point out that this made no logical sense - that it would surely be more honorable to boldly fight the 'dishonored dead'. She didn't even bother to point out that she had serious doubts about the reality of Sturmgard - that would put serious doubts on her suitability as jarl. Instead, she pointed out that she'd already delved deep into the tunnels.
"There's ancient magic down there," she conceded. "And much that I don't comprehend. There are catacombs and skeletons, too, but not the slightest hint of unholy animation about them. The far greater danger is monsters lurking from times unknown."
"Monsters, milady?" one of them asked.
"Is that a problem?"
Monsters, it turned out, were fine. Better than fine, really - a canny warrior might even get a trophy out of a monster. Monsters weren't a problem, provided they weren't dishonored monsters. But they still weren't convinced that the dead didn't roam the catacombs of the underground, proposing that they might have merely been afraid of Matthias and his fire abilities.
"They're weak against the purifying flame, you see," Farn explained.
Thea had hoped to leave Matthias behind, so as to provide a last line of defense against any enemy scions who made it to the townsfolk. Heath might yet do some good, but it would be a few days before he was at full health, and Larian's use was more in her ability to plan and heal, though she was a feisty fighter in a pinch. She'd hoped to leave Matthias to aid the townsfolk, but had to admit she was relieved to have him along. He knew Nortsair better than anybody, and his abilities could be devastating in the right situation. And, once she asked him, it took surprisingly little to convince him to join - he wanted to keep Maddie and Svilga safe, after all.
"If you don't pull this off, none of us are safe," he told her over supper at Ma Coker's. "Plus, there's a better than even chance that the girls follow along, regardless. They can't stand being cooped up."
Thus, their contingent left for Nortsair the next morning - Thea, Cano, Matthias, the dozen Soenmen who were least afraid of the dishonored dead lurking underground, and a half dozen young Rouentzian townsfolk who made up for their lack of fighting experience with lots of enthusiasm.
Even knowing where they were going, it took all day to traverse the underground to Nortsair. There were multiple cave-ins along the way, most of which only slowed them down, and others that they had to stop and disassemble, hoping the whole cave wouldn't collapse around them. Cano did most of the work there, though Matthias and a few of the stronger men were able to lift enough to be of use, hauling rocks (and, in Cano's case, boulders) back down the corridor until there was a passageway large enough for them to traverse. Not once did they encounter the 'dishonored dead' - that was for the best, Thea reckoned, because the dishonored living gave them trouble enough.
The whole time across the underground, as they delved through those dark corridors, Thea fretted. Even as they made their mad push into Nortsair, Bestel Myrdon was probably approaching her home, her friends, and a lot of innocent people, with an army that would have dwarfed Rorik's already-impressive force. He was approaching with all his powers and all his malice and Thea was fleeing underground for a gambit that, the more she thought about it, couldn't possibly work. The twenty of them against a whole city? It was a foolish plan...
"Do you know anybody in Nortsair who might help us?" she asked Matthias.
This was during their early afternoon rest stop. They would have stopped a bit earlier, but the Soenmen had deemed the empty, finely-hewn hallways with their strange symbols and liberal use of bones as decoration to be far too crypt-like. So they'd continued for another hour until they were in a rough passage of limestone and gypsum far more like a mine tunnel than a crypt. Matthias leaned against an ancient stone pillar and thought, his eyes glassy-golden in the torch light.
"Anybody at all?" Thea asked. "We could really use the help."
Matthias took a swig from his canteen. "I know plenty who might help," he said. "Assuming they're even alive and haven't fled. I know precious few who will help. Smugglers are a notorious mercurial bunch."
Thea nodded, a slight frown playing across her features. "Were you a smuggler?" she asked. It seemed like the kind of thing she ought to know about a man she'd shared a bed with on multiple occasions. Weren't smugglers bad people?
Matthias shrugged, carefully gauging her response. "I wasn't a smuggler by trade. The vast majority of my father's business was legitimate. But I won't lie to your face and pretend it's not a world I belonged to. Nestor and I wouldn't pass up smuggling opportunities when they presented themselves. We'd done a fair amount on the trip we were returning from when we spotted you in the woods. I'm not sure I know a single petty merchant who didn't do at least a little smuggling - very high margins of profit, you understand, and nine tenths of it is for stuff that ought not to be illegal in the first place..."
Thea put some distance between them. "What's the other tenth?"
"You know... drugs, alchemicals... people. I did some of the first two, some of it pretty serious stuff, but never people. Not even once, even when it cost me connections. And thank the gods for that - how could I live with myself, trading people as chattel and now knowing my own daughter was kept as a slave for three years?"
Thea tried to imagine Matthias's life in Nortsair. She wanted to be angry at him, but realized that this was more because he'd waited until her prompting to reveal this bit of information than because it was actually all that bad. Knowing what little she did about the fortress town, his eschewing human trade probably said a lot more about his strength of character than moving drugs and alchemical concoctions said about some corruptive weakness. Matthias, not incorrectly, gauged her response for moral judgment. He put his arm around her, resting it against the small of her back. Thea didn't pull away, but neither would she meet his gaze.
"I promise I'm not that person anymore," he said. "But it wasn't so long ago... and if we're to get help inside the city, I'm going to be talking to some very shady people."
"I... I think I understand," Thea said eventually. "You're a good man, Matthias, and I'd be a fool to think anybody was perfect. If I was mostly-incorruptible before, it's only because I was too simple to be properly corrupted. Since then, I've killed people who probably didn't deserve to die, so I'm not exactly in a position to play righteous over whatever you did before."
Matthias breathed a sigh of relief and drew her into a warm hug. "That's good. I'm trying. I really am - I've got daughters to make an example for. And they look up to you, too. Thea."
Thea nodded and nestled her head into the crook of his shoulder. "Let's try not to let them down, then."
+++++
After clearing a final cave-in, they found themselves at Nortsair – or so the ancient script upon the walls proclaimed: North Stair – Passage, Imperator Rex, or the passage to the North Stair for those acting on behalf of Astrillas's emperor. This, in turn, led to a narrow flight of stairs and a long, slimy-floored corridor, at the end of which was a barred-off door. The bolts on the bars were nearly rusted through, and Cano pulled it off with such ease that Thea suspected she could have done it, herself. This, in turn, led to a small sub-basement level of Fortress Nortsair, which didn't appear to have been used for decades at least.
They passed broken, mouldering furniture, deteriorated barrels, and crates of textiles lost to moths and rats. Nortsair was built upon a broad, flat-topped hill, and the fortress it sat upon ran several levels deep, depending upon the part of the hill. The level they'd found themselves in lay a full fifty feet beneath the city. The next level they found themselves was inhabited, albeit very sparsely. Thea peeked around a corner to see two men in civilian clothes struggling to carry a crate down the corridor. Thea realized with a start that all eyes were on her.
"What?" she said.
"Should I deal with them?" Cano asked. Cano who rarely asked anybody over anything – it was in his nature to just spring into action.
Thea held up a slim finger. "No killing unless absolutely necessary. She turned to the Soenmen to make sure they knew she meant them, too. And if you're not sure whether it's necessary? Assume that it is – we're not in a position to fool around and play nice. As for those two?" She looked Cano up and down, from his golden cuirass to the ancient style of his running sandals. "Tell them you're one of Lord Myrdon's men and offer to help. If they balk, then kill them. And if not, they'll show us the way out."
Cano did as ordered, ambling out and chatting the men up for a minute before hoisting the crate over his shoulder as if it weighed nothing and laughing with the two men as they strolled across to the stairwell up. Fortunately, those were the only people who might have seen them, for the Soenmen were champing at the bit and would have slaughtered anybody who gave them half a reason to. They went two floors straight up and to a street-level exit, at which point Cano returned the crate to the men, wished them well, and chatted up the guard for all of twenty seconds. When the guard spotted the twenty of them prowling up the stairs, he turned with a start and Cano tossed the poor man across the room and into the guard tower's stone wall. Two of the Soenmen rushed forward and finished the job.
"Absolutely necessary," Farn Surestrike reassured Thea, though she was far from convinced. She suspected she'd just about given them free license to slaughter by appealing to their good judgment.
Just like that, they were on the streets of Nortsair, twenty well-armed invaders tasked with capturing a whole city. They'd spent a whole day getting there, and it was very nearly sunset, made darker by the gray clouds and drizzle of rain that had drawn a veil across the sky. It didn't look so different from how Thea remembered the place, either, at least until she saw the procession of rotting and mutilated bodies tied along the roadway as a warning to those who would challenge Lord Myrdon's rule. Thea's hand wandered toward her axe, but she didn't draw it – not yet.
"We're pretty conspicuous," she said, looking back to the twenty-one of them filing out of the eastern guard tower. "We should split into smaller groups and reconvene at... where? The Trader's Gate?"
Matthias blinked. "You remember where Big Bardo's is?"
"I remember everything," Thea reminded him. Most people, Matthias included, quite obviously didn't. "Five groups of four," she said. "Well... four groups of four and one group of five. Cano can bring up the rear with the five. The groups who don't know where Bardo's is will follow behind one of the ones who does – well behind, or it'll be just as suspicious as if we all tromp over together. Any questions?"
"Who's Big Bardo?" Cano asked.
"If he's still around, you'll meet him."
Thea and Matthias took different routes – Thea took the one she already knew, and Matthias skulked off into some other complex of back alleys to get there. The streets of Nortsair were mostly empty, a handful of militia patrolling the streets, along with western mercenaries from Tusuth, clad in their rugged leathers and with their strange bows strapped to their backs. The citizens who were still out were few, and they scurried about – probably trying to get to wherever they needed to go before curfew. Thea felt sorry for the people, to be living under such despotic rule. She wondered how many had died, thinking at first that is must be thousands, given how empty the streets were... but there were quite a few lights peeping through shuttered windows and faces peering out from darkened rooms. Most of the townsfolk of Nortsair were alive, but they were living in terror.
"This town is rich," Olfar Vinsson whispered – he was one of the Soenmen in Thea's small group. He pointed to a statue of some long-dead lady of Nortsair, her stone features wan in the twilight. Its craftmanship was below what the ancient Astrillans had once mastered, but was apparently enough to impress a Soenman.
"Rich and weak," Thea agreed. "If we capture it, you'll live like a lord."
Olfar nodded thoughtfully – hers had been an acceptable response. They continued through the side-roads and back-alleys of Nortsair, passing beyond the scrutiny of the militia and into the semi-secluded patchwork of crammed passages that made up Bardo's domain. There were more people on the streets here, but they were wary – they lurked in the dim light, watching, and they drew deep into the shadows as the group approached them. Nobody said a word to them until they met up with Matthias by Big Bardo's sanctum near the Traveler's Gate.
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave, sir. I have no idea who you are and ain't feeling so kindly disposed," she heard Bardo say.
Matthias and Bardo were squaring off against one another, the two men very close to the same height, but Bardo broader and far fatter. It looked like they might be very close to blows which, contrary to appearances, was likely to go very poorly for the big gatekeeper, especially when you considered the other three men in Matthias's group, who were hanging back while things unfolded.
"I told you," Matthias said. "I'm Matthias Mendic... you remember, Matthias and Nestor? I look different, but..."
"You 'look different'?" Bardo chuckled. "That's a new one. You mean to say you're a different man who happens to be the same as an old customer?"
"I know it sounds crazy... but listen to me, man! It's for the good of Nortsair – I need to get as many of the Hollow Houses together as possible... this might be your only chance to get rid of Lord Myrdon."
Big Bardo shrugged. "Why should I want to get rid of Myrdon? Business has been pretty good of late. Now... I'm gonna ask you nicely once more, and then I'm not gonna be so nice."
"Do you remember me, Mister Bardo?" Thea asked. She stepped into the lantern light, the other men in her group looming behind her in the shadows.
The gatekeeper took his eyes off Matthias for a moment and looked Thea up and down, his tongue running along a scar-split lip. He scratched at his dark and wiry, white-streaked hair. "Yeah, don't reckon I could forget you, miss." He spit into his palms and slicked his unruly mane of hair back. "Even prettier than I remember you."
"Charmed," Thea said. "If you're not in the trusting mood, then I hope you're at least in the mood for some self-preservation, sir. Because whatever uptick you've seen in business is temporary. Smugglers will only be smuggling people and goods out of the city for so long... then it'll dry up, and whatever smuggling and vice is left over will be monopolized by Lord Myrdon, and that trap your fingers are itching to trigger, and whatever other tricks you've got up your big sleeves will amount to nothing but an excuse for the lord to put a very sudden end to Big Bardo. If you help us, no one need ever know about it if we fail... and if we succeed, I have a very good memory, and my memory of your help just might help me forget about the Trader's Gate."
"Who the hell are you, lady?" Bardo asked.
Thea took another step forward, using a tiny glimmer of power to add a halo of stars to her head. "Someone who's asking nicely," Thea said. "I hope we don't get to the part where we aren't gonna be so nice."
Bardo sensed he was out of his depth, and indicated as much with a heaving shrug. "I'll get who I can among the Hollow Houses, miss, but I'm not gonna make no promises. Half of 'em have left the city, as you say, and the other half are every bit as suspicious as ol' Bardo."
"Let's hope they're as open to reason as ol' Bardo, too," Thea said.
+++++
The 'Hollow Houses' of Nortsair were the loose confederacy of smugglers who, until recently, had run most of the crime in the city. They were thus named because a constant stream of goods entered their collective establishments, and very little of it was ever seen again. It was joked that their walls must be hollow to stash so much – where, of course, all of the contraband was leaving through clandestine means. For decades, the lords of Nortsair had turned a blind eye to the smuggling – and, in fact, made argentos off of the illicit trade whenever there was coin to be had. But Bestel Myrdon wasn't about to let lesser criminals subtract from his growing fortune, and so smart money said the Hollow Houses' days were numbered.
When Big Bardo sent word out, the notice got around quickly, and they'd only been milling about the place for a few hours, grabbing what little rest they could, when the representatives from the Hollow Houses arrived. In truth, they represented almost all of what remained of Nortsair's once-proud smuggling community, reduced to a scant twenty or thirty dedicated smugglers divvied up among the five remaining houses... the other three were dead or gone in various measures.
"Val Pyreside and her whole operation got nipped," Sul Astor said. "Lord Myrdon hung what's left of 'em along Feaster's Way... I told them not to push it." He and his two sisters comprised the whole of the Astor operation, and all three siblings were friendly, warm, and north of seventy years old, more like kindly grandparents than inveterate smugglers.
"All long as people are still buying rugs, we'll roll things up in 'em," Ahima Astor said.
"Albeit a bit less these days," her sister added.
The Astors were unlikely to provide much beyond droll stories and sage advice, but some of the other houses brought a bit more muscle, like the Wren Flock, who arrived six strong and promised they could provide another six if Thea could promise to end the killing and keep her attention a away from the Trader's Gate.
"I won't promise that things will be like they were before - if I'm in charge, there'll be no more human trafficking, but I couldn't care less about illicit alchemicals..."
"Who's to say you'd be in charge, anyway?" Elias Wren asked. Slim and fair, he looked about twelve years old but was, apparently, the leader of the largest smuggling operation still extant in Nortsair.
"I welcome a healthy debate on that topic once we've actually done the deed. But I suspect there's a reason that I'm asking for your a assistance and not the other way around. And if you don't help me and I still succeed?" She tutted. "That would be very unfortunate."
After just a bit more negotiation and bickering, Thea managed to enlist the help of most of the remaining Hollow Houses - even the Astors who, despite their pretenses to doddering, promised they were still plenty capable of causing a diversion. That was mostly what they needed the houses for, anyway: a diversion to draw the militia out of defensible quarters and to insinuate themselves into control of the city with as little fight as possible.
"My place is nearby," Elias noted, looking to his cousins. "If you aren't afraid I'll double-cross you, it'd be a fine spot to plan and rest as need be."
"I'm led to believe you're a clever man," Thea said. She walked up to the young man and ran a slim finger along the silken green of his shirt - despite his pretenses, Wren was nervous. "I hope that's true, because then I'll have no fear of bad intentions. Basic self-preservation being an essential trait for cleverness..." Wren seemed to pick up on the subtle threat.
It being well past curfew and close to midnight, they made their way to Wren's through the sour-smelling back alleys, some of them so narrow that Bardo could barely fit his rotund frame through the narrowest gaps. Then, the houses got to planning their distraction, and Thea listened intently for about five minutes, before someone pushed a cup of ale in her hand, and then another, and Thea grew warm and sleepy as she drank it. When Matthias nudged her away from the table, Thea pouted at him and pulled away.
"Come on, you're not even listening," Matthias insisted.
Thea was about to repeat back the recent conversation ad verbatim and realized she couldn't – she hadn't been listening. Some debate about whether to use a horse and, if so, whose. The context of that bit of the plan eluded her. He led her away to a secluded corner of the Wrens' parlor, to a great comfy chair that Matthias had staked out. She curled in next to him and was asleep the moment her head touched down upon his chest.
+++++
"Are you ready?" somebody asked. Thea cracked her eye open to confirm that it was Cano.
"No, but I can be in five minutes. What time is it?"
"An hour until dawn," he said. "The smugglers all reckon we should make our move before light to get the jump on the militia."
"I reckon they're right," Thea said.
She extracted herself from Matthias, nudged him awake with her foot, and spent a few minutes blinking the sleep from her eyes and securing her armor. The Soenmen were also getting ready, some of them praying to Soenim... most praying to Valkiyr, a change she approved of. So far as she could tell, Valkiyr was about half-way between Cano's and Matthias's patron gods, a goddess of valor, but not necessarily battle, and of passage through the afterlife, but not necessarily death, and of lightning, too. Good for her – and good for Thea, now that Valkiyr and Astrilla were theologically aligned. She gathered the Soenmen around her. The half-dozen townsfolk from Rouentz gathered around, too, listening with rapt attention.
"We're about to take on the whole city," she said. "A city far larger than Rouentz... it would gobble our little town up ten times over. And soon, it will be ours. Bestel Myrdon took this city by treachery, and we'll take it by trickery... but it'll be very dangerous nonetheless. If any among you wish to forestall a probable death, now is the time to opt out. For the rest of you, I'll expect from you the same that I ask of myself: do not waste your life on foolish bravery, but be prepared to die to further our cause. If we all die here today, history may remember us as fools, traitors, or worse... but we know the valor that lies in our hearts. And I say this to you, children of the goddess, descendants of her great line..."
Thea looked to each of them briefly – her words had been chosen with great deliberation, for Soenim and Valkiyr were both the children of Ulthe, the all-goddess, who slumbered yet beneath Vintrebra, the great tree, and Thea wanted to include all of the Soenmen while distancing herself from their bloody god. "I say to you, brave warriors: I do not intend to die today, and when I die, my deeds will be whispered by the grandchildren of my grandchildren. We're about to take on this city... and we'll take the city, and we'll show them the strength and justice long missing from their land, and ours will be the cry to freedom..."
"And riches?" Farn Surestrike butted in.
"And riches," Thea agreed. "We're not here to plunder this city, and I'll renounce any man who does so... but I promise a golden talent to any man who fights bravely, and to the family of any man who dies bravely. Take nothing that isn't yours... but if the enemy dies by your hand, whatever he carries on his person is yours for the claiming. So go for the officers and their shiny, rarely-used swords and lacquered, rarely-used armor. We'll carve the fight right out of this city, friends, and the people will thank us for it. Are you ready for Sturmgard?"
"Yes, jarl!" the men bellowed back.
"You'll wake the neighbors," one of the Wrens observed.
"Then let them wake," Thea said. "Soon enough, all of Nortsair will tremble before us. Won't they?"
"Yes, jarl!"
After that speech, the five-minute creep to the Gate Tower was a bit anticlimactic. It was still almost an hour until first light, and it was as dark as ever. The one guard that they encountered considered his options and fled rather than confront them, dashing away from anybody he might warn at the tower. Then they arrived, waiting in the shadows across the ancient marble-patterned courtyard from the tower entrance. They waited for the distraction from the Hollow Houses which, Thea realized, she had no clue about. But she didn't have to wait long to find out.
It started with a cart rolling along the avenue and then across the courtyard, pushed by smugglers so well-hidden in the darkness that they could have given Heath a run for his money. They gave a guard a run for his money, too - he ran after the rumbling cart, and didn't seem to notice when the running pilots took off away from their vehicle and let the thing roll to a stop about two yards from the fortress walls. The guard investigated the cart from a moment and then letting out an instant of alarmed shout before the cart exploded in a brilliant purple blast that set Thea's ears to ringing and left her blinking spots out of her vision - explosive alchemicals, and lots of them. Somebody had been saving up for a rainy day. Really saving, because another cart came trundling down a moment later.
"Here they come," Cano said, his hand inching toward his sword.
"Easy there, champ," Matthias whispered. They were supposed to infiltrate the building, not attack the full bulk of the city's militia.
Men were charging out of the gate tower, weapons drawn - dozens of them, most of them local militia, with a smattering of stern-faced mercenaries among them. They didn't stay stern-faced for long, though, for another cart came rushing out of the dark and right toward the front entrance, scattering the men and trapping the remainder inside when the cart exploded just short of the door, collapsing the front wall of the tower in a an avalanche of charred and cracking rubble.
"Now!" Thea shouted.
Cano took off, and she was right behind with Matthias. She didn't want to think a about how many people had just been incinerated. Close to a hundred, if she had to guess - half the men who'd charged out and another few dozen inside. Rushing a across the courtyard, she saw charred bodies and dismembered limbs, and felt bits of stuff falling back to earth. She hoped most of it was debris, but some of it probably wasn't. Thea bound up the mound of debris right behind Cano and helped him toss stones to the side while Matthias stood guard and threw fiery death at anybody foolish enough to challenge them. Within fifteen seconds, they'd cleared a passage into the Gate Tower. They took a moment to regroup behind the cover of rubble and surged into the tower.
A group of a dozen militia had survived the explosion and had formed ranks inside, falling into a defensive formation, bucklers up and a few of them readying pikes to fend off an attack. They looked green and nervous...
"Surrender or die!" Thea shouted.
And, to her surprise, they did. The moment the first man tossed his pike to the side, the rest of them decided that was a pretty good idea. Maybe it was Thea's raw anger and the faint a aura of power that surrounded her. Maybe it was the assembly of a dozen a angry Soenmen right behind her.
"We yield! We yield!" their corporal shouted.
"Do we still get their things?" Farn whispered?
"Just their weapons," Thea said.
Farn kicked the discarded pike next to him and scoffed. "Their weapons are shit."
"So's their armor," Thea observed. "These aren't rich men."
Farn accepted this assessment, and so did the other Soenmen, quickly disarming the militia and then locking the lot of them into the small jail in the tower's next room. Reasoning that at least one of them had a key, Thea warned them:
"You're safe by our good grace - we're no enemies to Nortsair, friends. But if any of you get within arm's reach, I'm having my friend here take your hand off. Both hands, if he feels like it."
By then, more men had arrived – mercenaries, mostly. A few had been foolish enough to climb back through the front gate, and Matthias had made quick work of them. Outside, Thea saw the bloom of another purple alchemical explosion and heart the rumble of more carts. In her estimation, the Hollow Houses had managed to roll about twenty carts at the Nortsair defenses, four or five of which had explosives, and the rest of which were decoys. Not a bad plan for a distraction – frankly above and beyond what she'd expected. She could see the colorless shades of dead men drifting about the space where their incinerated bodies had been put to ash. Most of them would be gone within a day's time.
Matthias stayed at the base of the tower to fend off anybody foolish enough to follow them. As long as they only came one or two at a time (and none of them were immune to fire), he could defend the place for hours, his hands burning white-hot, fire shooting out in great gouts when he so desired, their flames so hot and bright that they hurt to look at.
"We're going up," she told him – she would have leaned in for a kiss, but his whole body was so scorching hot that, if it didn't harm Thea, it would certainly singe her clothes and har.
They stormed up to the next floor, two of their men dropping from bolts to the chest. Cano caught an arrow mid-flight and flung it right back at the bowman, apparently to good effect. Thea was up an instant after, dodging an arrow, then dodging the ricochet, and then tossing her pair of throwing axes. They were only a pound or two apiece, but that was plenty for destroying crossbows and, for one unfortunate man, sending bits of splintered wood and metal flying into his face. Within a few seconds, the rest of the Soenmen were up and engaged in actual melee. The mercenaries put up a good fight, but didn’t have much chance – all the Soenmen had to do was not get killed for a few seconds, and Cano was happy to do the rest, dashing and spinning at barely believable speeds, the sound of his sword going clink-clank-clunk-squish as he variously disarmed, disabled, and dispatched of the militia.
"That kill counts as mine!" Farn objected. Cano shrugged – he had no interest in claiming property from the dead and dying mercenaries.
"To the top of the tower!" Cano bellowed, and he surged up the stairs, the Soenmen and Rouentz-folk bellowing back and rushing to catch up. Thea brought up the rear...
+++++
A semi-hidden door burst open and, as Thea reacted to it, strong arms lunged out and grabbed her. Her axe clattered to the floor and the door slammed shut again. Nobody on her squad had seen it – they'd all been focused on the melee up on the next floor. Suddenly, Thea was in a room with at least several enemy soldiers. She elbowed the man who was holding her, and he threw her to the floor. Before the others could react, Thea rolled, sprang back to her feet, grabbed the sword out of the nearest man's hand, and skewered him right through the belly. His boiled leather armor didn't put up much of a fuss.
There were four more men, all of them hesitating for a moment – clearly, they'd been instructed to capture Thea and hadn't expected much of a fight. Well, too bad. They were getting one. The next closest man was disarmed a moment later, and then Thea had two swords. She'd seen Cano fooling around with two weapons and figured she could at least use her left-hand sword for defense... or her right-hand sword. Thea hadn't thought much about it, but she was pretty close to ambidextrous. She kicked the disarmed man as hard as she could – pretty hard, apparently, because he stumbled way back – and then turned to the other two, hitting the first man's sword into the second man's armor and, as they wrestled to disentangle from one another, she killed the first man and lunged toward the second...
The wind was suddenly knocked out of Thea, and she was vaguely aware that the crash of impact and the burst of pain across her back was her hitting the wall. A large and well-armored man tromped across the room, lifted Thea up like she weighed nothing, and slammed her against the wall again, stunning her.
"You want a job right, you do it yourself, am I right?" the man sighed.
He was dark-haired with pale skin and a week's worth of stubble, his eyes strangely ruddy in the lantern light. And he was at least as large as Matthias, clad in heavy mail with bits of plate, his fists as big as Ma Coker's dinner rolls, his nose big and pointed like a beak, nostrils flaring. Thea reached into her reserve of energy and shot a surge toward the man, its energy seemingly absorbed by his armor – he was a scion, too.
"Not today, princess," he said.
Then Thea kicked him in the thigh and the groin – unfortunately, well-armored. But the man cursed in surprised and loosened his grip enough for Thea to pull free for all of about two seconds. He caught her by the hair and pulled her back again.
"Your men are slaughtering mine upstairs. You've turned whatever element of the city against me... we can't have that. I'll have to make an example of you, and publicly. I wonder how your south-men would react if I tossed them your head?"
"Who are you?" Thea asked.
He shrugged. "Nobody of consequence. Not until recently... the name's Erodor Westman, but you may better know my patron, Argus, the God of the Soldier."
Thea knew it wouldn't do much good to struggle against Erodor – he was very nearly as strong as Cano, likely as resilient, and his armor could absorb her energies. Yet, even as he pulled her toward a secluded staircase and the pair of surviving soldiers filed along behind them, she wasn't powerless. Not completely.
"The God of the Soldier, are you? My friend is scion to Bardon, God of Battle, Valor, and Honor... I'm surprised there are two gods for the same thing..."
Erodor set Thea down for a moment and gestured for one of his men to unlock the door at the top of the stairs. He regarded her coolly and scratched at his stubble.
"What do you know of soldiers? Yes, sometimes a soldier yearns for valor and honor, but rarely does he yearn for battle. No, a soldier prays to remain uninjured, to be promoted, for an end to hour after hour of interminable boredom and, most of all, to keep his head. For every prayer to heroism and virtuosity, there are a dozen for the common hardships of the soldier."
"And for that, Bestel Myrdon put you in charge of the city's defense?"
He shrugged and pulled Thea through the now-open door. "I can keep the soldiers in line. I can keep the ranks happy and disciplined, can keep the city stable with a minimum of manpower." He looked Thea up and down, but not in a lascivious way. "Barring the unforeseen, I do a good job."
"My friends aren't the only ones here, you know," Thea said. "We had three dozen more sneaking through the Trader's Gate at midnight. Whatever you're thinking of doing, you'd better hope it can survive a dozen more explosions and nearly forty screaming Soenmen..."
"Sir?" One of the guards said.
Erodor chewed at his lip and regarded Thea again. "You're playing for time," he stated. "Very clever. The clever are the enemy of the soldier – but, in your case, not for long."
He opened another door, and suddenly they were outside and along the parapets of Nortsair Fortress, the wooded hills of Astorfall Forest sloping to one side and the city of Nortsair spreading out to the other. In the feeble light of dawn, Thea could see smoke trailing up from the sites of the several explosions – they'd done some damage to the fortress's edifice, but it would take a dozen such explosions in one spot to blow a hole through the thing. The city, normally mostly-asleep at such an early hour, was buzzing over the explosions. A few dozen citizens were milling about to see what the commotion was about, and a few were pulling the dead and the injured from the rubble. Erodor signaled for his guards to light the nearby torches and then started ringing a massive bell quite similar to the one from Rouentz's church belfry.
"People of Nortsair!" Erodor Westman bellowed, and his bellow was that of a drill sergeant, audible at quite some distance. "People of Nortsair, gather to see what fate befalls traitors and enemies!"
He grabbed a handful of hair and shoved Thea toward the edge of the parapet, and for a moment, Thea was terrified that he was about to toss her over. But, no – that wasn't dramatic enough, and neither were there enough people watching yet. He gave Thea a little shake, enough to set the leather strips of her armor skirt flapping.
"This woman..." he cleared his throat and mumbled, "Um, what's your name?"
"Thea Ever-Blessed, Jarl of Rouentzhelm, The Battle-Maiden of Purgistok, and Scion of Astrilla."
"This woman, Thea, Ever-Blessed, is the leader of the criminals who attacked our bastion, whose rebels against Lord Myrdon have killed scores of our lord's loyal servants, have killed your fellow citizens. As custodian of this city I, Captain Erodor Westman, will not permit such villainy. Let it be known what happens to all who raise arms against Lord Myrdon and his loyal servants! I sentence this criminal to death and order her head tarred and placed upon a spike as a reminder to those who pine for the crooked old ways!"
He turned to the two guards attending him, and ordered them to hold her still, with her head and upper torso protruding for all to see. Thea struggled against the guards, and gave them plenty of trouble in holding her still, but they were both large and strong enough that even her very-slightly-preternatural strength couldn't overcome it. Captain Westman raised his great blade, it flashed with some glimmer of magical power, and he brought it down, and Thea's severed head went tumbling to the courtyard below...
+++++
Thea's severed head went tumbling to the courtyard below, or so any onlooker from more than a few feet away would have seen. In truth, Thea leapt into action the moment she heard Erodor unsheath his sword. The captain was immune to her flickers of deadly goddess power, but his men certainly weren't. She drew upon her well of power, upon that power that pulsed and grew deep within her body, upon the energy that she was gradually learning to cultivate, and killed the two guards. Two little blinks of energy charred their hearts in their chests, immediately killing the men. Then, as the captain's sword came down, Thea spun out of the way and pulled the dead guard into its path, severing his still-gasping head and sending it tumbling to the ground.
Thea stood and faced Erodor Westman, her expression defiant, her crown of stars slowly growing in intensity as she stared him down. The sword wavered in his hand and he blinked in surprise, glancing back over the parapet, where a dozen or so citizens had rushed upon the fallen head and were lifting it triumphantly, for the captain to see. Clearly, they thought it was Thea's head... it had the vague feel of being her head, even though it very clearly wasn't.
"I... I don't understand." Erodor said.
"The soldier's place is not to understand," Thea said. "As far as anybody down there knows, you just executed a criminal. They saw you behead her, and they have the head as proof, soon to go tarred upon a pike for all the rest to see..."
The captain squared his jaw and steadied his grip upon his sword, an ornate flamberge blade in the rare blue metal called dweisteel. "I cannot betray Lord Myrdon," he said, and readied himself to fight.
"Bastard!" somebody shouted from... above? Cano leapt down from the top of the tower thirty feet up, landing behind Erodor with a palpable thump and the crack of bricks.
The captain had fast reflexes, wheeling around to stab Cano with his sidearm, but Cano easily caught his wrist. Meanwhile, Thea wrested the flamberge blade from his other hand and held it to his solar plexus.
"Th... Thea?" Cano said, surprised to see her alive.
"I yield!" the captain cried out. "Nortsair is yours, my lady!"
Fast and efficient huh
That's a style I like