Sorcha's Revolt

“Are you sure you want to go in there dressed like that?”

Sorcha considered DeSilva's question, glancing at her brief harem skirts and then to the unforgiving walls of Silveneir rising ahead of them along the highway. From where they stood on the brow of a hill overlooking the road, the city of Silveneir stood out against the twilight in the gleams of a thousand streetlamps and warm hearths.

“It's somewhere to go,” she said. “Do you have any money?”

“Quite a lot, actually,” DeSilva said, brightly, only to add with a darker note, “Your relatives were too goddess-fearing and honest to go through my gear when they left me out to die with the enemy wounded.”

Sorcha put her hand on his arm, and he managed a wry smile.

“It was bloody traumatic, I'll tell you that, waking up in a mass grave.”

“It's all over now, Monte.”

DeSilva had in fact exacted a terrible revenge on the Clan Kavnor, Sorcha's family, who had enjoined his aid against the invading Kraag barbarians, only to consign his wounded body to the charnel pit with the enemy dead. Loth Kavnor was a ruin now; in payment, DeSilva had done alone what a marauding army of Kraag had failed to achieve.

That Sorcha did not hold the massacre of half her clan against DeSilva was partly down to him having immediately gone on to rescue her from the remote nunnery where her family had sent her to be tortured.

“How much money do you have?” Sorcha asked.

“I don't know exactly, it's not in coin.” DeSilva dumped his pack on the ground and rifled through it, depositing spare clothes and camping equipment on the roadside. Eventually, he came up with two small sacks, followed by two more and a small box. Sorcha waited to be impressed, only to draw breath in disbelief; the sacks all contained gold dust, the box was full of gemstones. Sorcha had to touch the glittering assortment of rubies, diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds before she could quite believe it.

“You've got a king's ransom here!”

DeSilva grinned. “This is nothing; I thought it better not to weigh myself down with more.”

“Where did you get this?!”

“Oh, there was an island and some ancient ruins,” DeSilva said, airily.

Sorcha punched his arm. “Don't give me that epic adventure rubbish! I've done my own heroic journey too, thank you very much.”

“Yeah, but you just came back with a load of tattoos and some broadened horizons.” DeSilva drew her to him for a kiss. “I set out the son of the world's greatest swordsman and return a wizard laden with cash.”

“Even got a beautiful woman,” Sorcha added, sarcastically. “I see how it is, now. I see...”

DeSilva kissed her again, still grinning, then stooped to repack his bag, saving one bag of gold dust and a handful of gems that he put in his pocket.

“We've more than enough for a room at an inn. It's not Sabbath, so the gates should be open; we can reach the city tonight...” he glanced down at Sorcha's outfit, then up at her face. “...we might have to settle for an inn in the Foreign Quarter.”

Sorcha was dressed in Kellion harem clothes, the only alternative that had been available to the rough nun's habit she had been wearing when DeSilva found her at the nunnery. The revealing silks she now wore were the very nadir of fashion in prudish Silveneir.

DeSilva, with his Kellion looks and Kraagish fangs implanted in his upper jaw, could only be taken for an outlander in his native city, while Sorcha's silks and extensive tattoos likewise marked her; only in the more cosmopolitan Foreign Quarter could they expect any welcome.

Fashion in Silveneir was austere: military uniform and all concealing robes. Silvan women even wore silver masks to hide their faces both in public and private life. Sorcha had been raised to the mask but had rejected the tradition during her long journey by land, sea, and air.

The night sky above Silveneir was without a cloud; the moon shone brightly, and on the leaves and branches of the trees, on the highway and the distant hills, the silver gleam cast a spell that made the countryside seem truly sylvan.

“Oh, Monte, look at the moon.”

He glanced up, his attention more preoccupied with the distance still before them and their possible reception.

“You've got no romance in your soul,” Sorcha complained.

DeSilva groaned. “I rescued you from a nunnery, how romantic do you want?”

“Oh, I don't know,” Sorcha said sarcastically, “a horse would have been nice. You didn't think of nicking one on your way up to abbey?”

Sorcha shivered in her scanty outfit and hugged herself until DeSilva put his cloak around her and they walked on side by side sharing its warmth. “Better?”

“Marginally more romantic,” Sorcha said, snuggling close as they walked. Her touch set DeSilva thinking that they should stop for the night and go on to Silveneir in the morning. He said as much, but Sorcha only looked at him slyly.

“I know what you're thinking, and the answer's no, not when a little bit further will have us indoors and in a real bed.”

“We could just stop for a bit,” DeSilva suggested, and then thought his hopes had been answered when he saw a light through the trees at once side of the road. “Here, do you think that's an inn? We could stop for the night.”

“Or just steal a horse and ride on to the city,” Sorcha said, but followed him when he picked up the pace and hastened towards the presumed inn. A little closer and they saw it was not an inn but a two-storey ramparted tower like a squat ziggurat, double the width at its base as it was at the top. The lower floor and its battlements buttressed the upper part of the tower, which rose like a watchtower from the centre of the building. Up against the small tower were a number of lean-to buildings, creating a ragged third step around the low ziggurat. There were lights in the tower windows and a sentry on the wall; from the lean-to buildings came the smell of horses.

“It's an outpost,” DeSilva said, crouching down in the undergrowth beside the road with Sorcha beside him and peering through the trees. “I didn't know there were any on the back roads.”

“Are you sure you know where we are?”

“Yes, I know exactly where we are,” DeSilva said tetchily. “We came halfway along the Baltu Road and then down into the vale; the highway runs west to east from Naril Na Silva to Silveneir via Loth Kavnor, and it's lined with fortifications; it looks nothing like this. The only other highway is the coast road to Daricia, and that runs north to south; we're going northeast, so this has to be a back road joining one of those two ways to the city. I'm just surprised to see a guard post out here; I was heading roughly this way when I first left Silveneir, I didn't see any outposts.”

“So, what are going to do now? We can't go and knock on the door, not looking like this.”

“You wanted to wear the harem outfit,” he reminded her. “You said it was comfortable.”

“And it is,” Sorcha said, “it's like being naked.”

“And you like that?”

“I'm just as surprised as you are, let me assure you. But it's not just me, it's you; word of the Kraag attack must have reached the city by now.”

DeSilva rubbed his thumb on one Kraag fang ruefully. “Well, I'm not about to pull 'em out. You don't know what I went through to get them. I had to kill an Ur-Wulf.”

“Those are Ur-Wulf teeth?” Sabra reached to touch the long fangs protruding from DeSilva's top lip but hesitated and looked back to the nearby Silvan outpost. “Whatever the story behind them, we can't go telling it there; they'll not listen.”

“We'll just have to steal a horse then,” DeSilva said, and stood up to advance through the undergrowth and approach the tower from off the road.

“Monte, be careful!” Sorcha hissed, but he only waved for her to stay back before raising his hand before the forbidding ramparts.

“Stantine Fenn,” he said, and light blossomed in his upraised hand.

Sorcha looked away a split second too late; the corona of fire that rose around DeSilva momentarily dazzled her. When she looked again, the pillar of flame had stepped out from him, becoming the blazing, armoured figure of the demonic knight Stantine Fenn.

DeSilva had told her that the demon resided in the magic ring he wore on his left hand, but lately Sorcha had detected a change in the way he spoke of and to the demon.

The sentry on the Silvan tower saw Fenn's light at once and raised the alarm, but there was no time for any response. The heat emanating from Stantine Fenn redoubled, bringing with it a horrible itching sensation on the skin and nausea that twisted Sorcha's gut. Exhaustion pressed down on her, Fenn's presence leeching all strength from her limbs.

The sentry on tower staggered and collapsed. Sorcha folded slowly to her knees and only awoke when DeSilva scooped her up in his arms.

“Monte...? Tell me you didn't kill anyone?”

“Not a soul. And I only took one horse, too. We'll be in Silveneir before midnight.”

Sorcha realised that DeSilva was awkwardly holding the reins of horse between finger and thumb even while held her in both arms. She recovered enough to stand alone and took the reins while he mounted, then swung up behind him. Tiredness swept over her again and she snuggled beneath his cloak and rested her head between his shoulders.

She was asleep again before the horse had taken its first step and did not wake until DeSilva called her name softly and said, “We're here.”

“Where?” Sorcha did not at first know where she was, then she saw the walls and towers of Silveneir before them, the Western Gate standing open and the road passing beneath its forbidding arch. There was a sentry on the rampart and another on the threshold, both armed with spear and bow.

“Halt,” the woman on the threshold said, in Silvan. “Who rides the Warmistress' highway?”

“Just two travellers from Narillion,” DeSilva said.

The burning of Narillion had precipitated an exodus eastward out of Kellia into neighbouring Silveneir. Kellion refugees had flooded across the border; a Kellion man and a harem girl were far from a rare sight on the Warmistress' highway in recent weeks.

“More of you?” The sentry grunted. “Come into the light.”

DeSilva walked the horse forward until the light from the gatehouse lantern fell on his face. The sentry saw his fangs and gripped her spear haft a little tighter. “You're Kraag. What's your business in Silveneir?”

“Visiting an old friend, Timoth Kale. His shop's just inside the gate there.”

“I know who he is. He's been confined to the Foreign Quarter along with the others; you'd best on your way.”

“What do you mean confined?”

“To the Foreign Quarter,” the guardswoman reiterated. “All the Kellions have; there's a curfew in force, the whole area's under martial law.”

“Is there no way I can speak with my friend? I've come a long way.” DeSilva deliberately spoke in the singular; no Kraag or Kellion warrior would ever include himself in the same plural as any woman who travelled with him.

The guard glared at him, apparently in a quandary. At last, she cocked her head and called, “Sarge!” A door inside the gatehouse arch opened and the sergeant came out, an older Silvan woman in brightly polished mask and grey uniform, distinguished only by the rank stripes on her shoulder.

“What's the bother?” she demanded, and the guardswoman explained quickly.

The sergeant grunted, not pleased, but apparently satisfied that it was a question the younger soldier could not have resolved alone.

“You can come in, on condition that you proceed immediately to the Foreign Quarter. Once there, you'll be held with the other refugees until the Warmistress decrees otherwise.”

DeSilva thanked the sergeant and rode on beneath the arch into Silveneir. He was conscious of the guards watching them and reined the horse over at once to the narrow alley just inside the gate that led to Kale's shop.

In the shadow of the wall there were very few streetlamps; it so dark that the city skyline stood up in a black line that looked close enough to touch. The midnight sky was alight with stars, the heavens blue-black but brighter than the utter blackness of the shadowed streets. Against the sky, the terraces and ziggurats of Silveneir rose up mounting labyrinthine walkways, while over all towered the two vast pyramids, one surmounted by the Warmistress' palace, the other capped by the Temple of Iaran.

“See that?” DeSilva indicated a strange black obelisk standing between the gate and the alley, ten feet of upright granite protruding slightly on the road. “That's Noth Dansac's tomb. My father killed him on this very spot.”

“Aren't you related to him somehow?” Sorcha asked, and DeSilva nodded in the dark.

“He was my grandfather, but I never met him. They say his sword and armour are buried with him, but they also say he was an Akurite knight, and no one dares to break into his tomb.”

He laughed when he felt Sorcha shiver behind him.

“Oh, you Silvans...”

“What? Don't you dare call me superstitious or we'll be going for a ride around the Necropolis. But I've no desire to go traipsing around an Akurite tomb not ten yards from a warm bed. If you weren't just bullshitting that sergeant, I suggest we find this friend of yours.”

“Alright.” DeSilva glanced back through the darkness as if to see if the guards had heard Sorcha's remark. They were both used to speaking a polyglot mix of Kellion, Silvan and Darian. Hearing any one language spoken exclusively had become strange to Sorcha's ears, but she realised now that most city-dwellers would generally speak only their own native tongue.

“Monte, they probably wouldn't understand a word we said to each other.”

“Good point. They'll expect us to speak Kellion anyway.” Looking relieved, DeSilva dismounted and led the horse on foot down the alley while Sorcha rode.

Kale's shop was an old guard-room built into the steep turf rampart inside the wall, the door reached by a narrow flight of stairs. When there was no answer to his knock, he tried the door and found it locked.

Sorcha had known there was no one home at a glance; the air and aura of the shop was of an empty building.

“I think the guard was right,” DeSilva said, coming back down the steps. "Kale's not here. We'll have to go to the Foreign Quarter.”

“The guard also said we wouldn't be allowed back out,” Sorcha reminded him, but he laughed.

“How will they stop us?”

Sorcha did not deign to argue; they rode on for an hour through the darkened streets, seeing no one until they were within a half mile of the Foreign Quarter. The smell of the canals reached them first, and then the darkness bloomed with firelight; down the centre of the main street that bordered the Foreign Quarter, a picket-line of bonfires had been set.

Beyond the pickets, the streets and alleys leading into the Foreign Quarter were barricaded with carts, furniture, and assorted debris. Silvan police stood on the near side of the bonfires, watching the barricades, which were in darkness. Sorcha stared into the shadows and thought she saw movement on the barricades, armed men laying in cover atop the improvised walls.

“Hold tight,” DeSilva told Sorcha, and raised his hand even as the police spotted them.

“Oh, Monte, don't...”

“There's not a lot of choice.” DeSilva pushed the indwelling force of Stantine Fenn outwards in an invisible wall to meet the Silvan police. The demon himself did not appear this time, but again Sorcha felt the awful crawling on her skin and the leeching of her vitality until darkness descended and she toppled from the saddle.

DeSilva caught her before she hit the ground; when she could see again, the police along the barricade were down, felled just as she had been by Stantine Fenn's power.

“How does he do that?” Sorcha whispered, accepting DeSilva's help to her feet. “So he's a demon, he's all heat and fire, fair enough. Why does everyone pass out around him?”

She almost jumped out of her skin when the voice of Stantine Fenn replied, like hot iron plates crashing together and somehow yet forming words. “I am birthed upon the realm of fire; my presence in this sphere is anathema to all mortal life.”

Even that brief resurgence of Fenn's presence raised another waft of unholy heat that made Sorcha lean again on DeSilva for support. While she and all the sentries had been felled, DeSilva alone remained immune to Fenn's power.

“Alright, back in the ring, you,” DeSilva said, and the ill warmth faded.

Sorcha recovered quickly, but the police sentries stirred too.

“Come on.”

DeSilva helped Sorcha back onto the horse and mounted up, took the reins, and moved along the street, winding between the picket line of bonfire until they reached a wide cross-street where the barricade was strung long and thin enough to accommodate a pair of upturned carts as its centre piece, with a third cart parked in the gap between them for a crude gate.

There were nearly a dozen Kellions on the ramshackle wall, which in places comprised a formidable barrier, but at its weakest was barely six feet high.

As Sorcha and Desilva approached, a tall man stood up on the cart with a rifle at his hip and spoke in Kellion, “Who goes there? What the hell did you do to those plod?”

“They'll be fine,” DeSilva said, responding in the same language. “I'm Montesinos DeSilva.”

There was whispering in the darkness on the barricade, the rifleman conferring with his fellows who lurked out of sight.

“Wait there a moment,” he called at last, and crouched down for balance as the cart beneath him creaked and rolled out of the way.

“Monte...” Sorcha clung a little tighter to DeSilva as they passed through the open barricade and into the Foreign Quarter.

“Shh. We'll find out what's going on soon enough.”

As they passed the barricade and came into the street, they saw men on the inside of the improvised rampart armed with rifles and swords. The Foreign Quarter was in darkness, every window blacked out and the streets lit solely by the watch-fires of the police picket line.

“Head down the street,” one of the Kellion riflemen said, pointing. “You'll see your way from there.”

The lights of the police fires faded behind them into the dark, but ahead the gloom parted to reveal a single lighted building. Like every other building, the windows were blacked out, but a lantern hung on the porch, casting enough light to pick out the sign that identified the place as an inn.

In contrast to the dead silence on the streets, from within the tavern came a muffled uproar like an indoor battle.

As Sorcha and DeSilva drew close, a man was suddenly flung bodily through the main downstairs window in a crash of breaking glass. The horse startled and Sorcha had to grab the saddle to avoid being thrown. DeSilva caught the horse's reins again and held on until it calmed.

Light spilled into the street now through the broken window. The defenestrated man was already picking himself up, shaking glass from his clothes and hair. Before he could quite recover, two more men clambered through the broken window and set on him, one with a dagger and the other with a billy-club.

Even before they had quite settled him, the door of the inn burst open and over a dozen men poured out, tussling, and shoving. As soon as they were in the street, the scuffle resolved back into the brawl that had evidently started inside. Free of the tightly enclosed bar, they drew swords and set to immediately, the multiplying chime of steel punctuated by oaths and the occasional gunshot.

Sorcha and DeSilva stood in the middle of the street, watching the fracas but completely ignored by the combatants.

The fight quickly resolved into two factions, masked and hooded men against a smaller number of bareheaded Kellions. Surrounded by the masked men, the smaller party had formed a ring of steel in the middle of the street and were valiantly standing off the greater part of the enemy, though bodies were falling on both sides, some to crawl away and others never to rise.

In the thick of the melee, DeSilva saw a face he recognized; his own father, Montesinos DeKellia, sword in hand against three masked men, with a young beardless Kellion guarding his back, a boy armed with a sabre and fighting magnificently.

That the youth was notable in the fight was sufficient surprise; DeKellia had long been renowned as the greatest swordsman alive. He seemed to be everywhere at once, parrying blows aimed not only at himself but at his comrades too, whirling through the fight with the grace of a dancer, his sword darting like a living silver serpent. Somehow, the youth was at his back all the time, sabre intercepting blows at DeKellia that he did not even bother to evade, so complete was his faith in his young companion.

DeSilva called out and his father looked up momentarily before plunging his sword into the body of his nearest opponent. The man folded up around the blade and took the weapon with him to the floor; the remaining two men pounced on DeKellia before he could retrieve it.

Sorcha caught her breathe, but the young lad at DeKellia's side stepped in and engaged both enemy blades. They bore down on the youth in a double clinch, but within a second DeKellia had intervened. The loss of his sword did nothing to reduce his deadly grace; he glided in close and took a headlock, scooping the jaw of one of the hooded men from behind with one hand, hauling the man backward and leaving the youth to deal with the remaining foe.

Sorcha only saw the knife in DeKellia's hand when it was withdrawn; blood glistened black in the moonlight, and the hooded man crumpled backwards.

The youth, meanwhile, had made two quick slashing feints at his remaining opponent. The masked man gave ground but parried in earnest both times. The contending swords flickered, but never touched. Then the youth bulled forward despite his smaller build, body-checking the hooded man while he was on the back foot. In the next instant he was dead, folded up with the youth's sword buried to the hilt in his torso. Sorcha flinched but could not look away; the sword sprouted from the masked man's back, black with blood, and was then suddenly withdrawn, the youth planting a kick on the dead man's chest to free the sword.

DeKellia and the youth looked around quickly, but the fight was done. Most of their comrades were still alive, but only two masked men remained on their feet, one cornered against the inn by two Kellion swords and the other surrounded by four grim-faced foes.

Blades chimed again and both masked men cried out. The victorious Kellions wiped their swords clean and regrouped in the middle of the street. There was a brief conversation in low tones, then two of them began counting their own casualties while the rest took the enemy bodies away towards the canals.

Sorcha dismounted and led the horse by the reins as she and DeSilva walked up to meet DeKellia and his friend. The Kellion youth looked about fifteen, dressed in boots and jodhpurs, an outsized white shirt, and a tricorn hat.

“Well!” DeKellia affected an exaggerated swagger and bowed theatrically. “Here's an unexpected party!”

He was grinning, his face flushed. As he drew nearer, Sorcha detected liquor on DeKellia's breath, mingling with the fresh reek of blood, cordite, and the ever-present smell of horses and tobacco that perpetually followed him.

“Father,” DeSilva said, a little stiffly. DeKellia coughed and sobered somewhat.

“Son,” he said, then grinned when he saw Sorcha and winked at her. “Hello, sweetheart.”

“Where's Vashta?” DeSilva asked, enquiring after the woman his father had rescued from the burning of Narillion.

DeKellia put away his sword before replying. “Inside. She should be more use in a fight than she is, but what can I do?”

“And Hnasi?” Sorcha asked, referring to DeKellia's second concubine, the feline Hrin-woman he had brought back from the deepest south.

“Asleep, probably,” DeKellia said airily. “Now I imagine you three will want to talk; I'll be inside. Try not to kill each other.”

He turned on his heel and strode off while Sorcha was still working out quite what DeKellia meant. Only DeSilva's sudden tension alerted her to the Kellion youth who still stood before them, sword loose in his hand. Sorcha stared, fighting to break through her confusion to the recognition that she sensed lurking somewhere beyond.

Then the youth took off his hat and shook out his hair, heavy red ringlets that fell to the shoulder, and Sorcha's vision seemed to slip suddenly back into focus. The youth that she had taken for a young Kellion man was in truth a young woman barely a year younger than Sorcha. They shared the same red hair and emerald eyes, but this girl was slightly broader in the jaw, with a faint smatter of freckles that Sorcha lacked. Then recognition fully connected, and Sorcha knew she was looking at her sister, Sabra.