The trumpet sounded again while he was pushing his way through his own warriors. It was closer still. The fort seemed a labyrinth of buildings and streets to him, one made more confusing in that some of the streets that had been clear were now blocked with burning debris. He cursed and I sensed his rising dismay. Once he broke clear of his followers, he called back to them, “We need to make for the gate. We must not be corralled inside the fort!” He pushed Clove into a trot again and once more his warriors fell in behind him. I could sense him seething with fury and impotence that he had no way of summoning his scattered force to him, no way to reach all of his warriors and tell them that he wanted them outside the walls of the fort rather than within.
We retreated through a nightmare. The fires had spread, just as he had planned. The streets were thick with smoke and fallen burning debris littered the road. There were bodies as well, mostly Gernian but some Speck, and once I glimpsed a mother holding a baby and clutching an older girl by the hand. When she saw us turn down the street toward her, she silently fled, pulling her child behind her. They ran down a narrow alley. When we passed it, they were out of sight, and no one gave chase to them. Soldier’s Boy was as intent now on getting his warriors out of the fort as he had been originally on getting into it.
Clove was equally willing to depart from this hellish place. My placid old mount fought his bit and jigged ponderously, longing to break from his heavy trot to a lope. Soldier’s Boy held him in, shouting to his warriors to keep up with him. He could have fled and left them there; I will give him that. He did not desert his men. It was not his fault that he had passed a crossroads when, from the shadows on his left, small-arms fire burst out, dropping the men immediately behind him. Clove, startled, leapt forward, while those who had seen the men in front of them fall fled backward, shouting. Soldier’s Boy hauled hard on Clove’s reins, turning the big horse and then kicking him after his fleeing warriors. He was fortunate that the hidden soldiers were recharging their weapons. Clove jigged and shied over the bodies in front of him before he left them behind and caught up with Soldier’s Boy’s force.
“Stay close to me! We must go a different way, to another gate,” he shouted to them. He glanced up at the sky, hoping to take his bearings from the stars. The rising smoke banished that hope. At the next intersection, he turned, randomly I suspect, and led his warriors on. This section of the town was mostly intact; these were the simpler homes and the less important buildings that had escaped his fires. I prayed that any folk in them would stay within and hidden, and that Soldier’s Boy would be too intent on fleeing to do them any harm. The light from the fires several streets away danced eerily in the windowpanes of the crouching houses. Either their occupants had fled or they huddled, lightless and silent, inside them. We saw no one, and no one barred our way.
The air grew clearer but the darkness deeper. Surrounded by fires earlier, no one had thought to bring a torch. Soldier Boy cursed his own stupidity and then, with a deep grunt of effort, summoned the magic. Light emanated from him. Probably I alone knew what it cost him to work such a charm in a settlement so thick with iron. Even the nails in the boards of the buildings we passed seemed to snag and tear at our magic as we hastened by them. The illumination he gave off enabled his followers to trail us, but did not light the way for him. I thought to myself that it made him an excellent target for anyone who might see him, but kept that thought small and to myself.
Another turn, and suddenly the gate was before us. It was open, and torches flanked it, beckoning us. I wondered that the sentries had not roused to the fires and trumpets. Perhaps they had, for I saw no sign of them. Freedom and escape beckoned us through the open mouth of the gate. It was the north gate, the most seldom used gate of the fort, the gate that we joked led to “nowhere.” Outside it, only a thin layer of town lay between us and the wastelands beyond. The north side of the fort was the least sheltered from the prevailing winds. Blown snow was always deepest there and the howl of the wind always the strongest. Only the poorest hovels were built on the north side of the fort, the homes of the widows and orphans of dead prisoners for the most part. Their huts were dark and unfired. The unimportance and uselessness of that population had saved them from the Specks’ attention. Shadow and concealment beckoned in the crooked streets. Relief bloomed in Soldier’s Boy heart. “To me!” he commanded his drained band, and kicked up Clove’s flagging trot.
Soldier’s Boy cleared the gate and a moment later, his warriors mobbed around him. They were clear of the fort’s confining walls. He glanced about himself, getting his bearings. He caught a tiny flash of light, a reflection of smoke-filtered moonlight on someone’s buckle. Years of Sergeant Duril’s drilling me paid off for him. He flung himself sideways off his horse, putting Clove’s bulk between him and the ambush, quenching his light as he fell. Muzzle-flash, the crack of explosion, and angry bees whizzing over him. Clove screamed as a projectile tore out a chunk of his neck. A wall of smoke rose up from the weapons and wafted up to join the smoke of the burning buildings. A stench of rotten eggs floated with it.
