Alliances

The faithful Kagonesti departed. When Porthios was alone, he seated himself on a rock and took a small sewing kit from a pocket in his robe. Born to rule Qualinesti, he was no tailor, but of late he’d had a lot of practice sewing. His stitches were uneven but tight and strong. In minutes his shame was covered once more.

Night had fallen by the time they beheld Samustal. The dark seemed to hang all the heavier over the squalid town. An overcast sky pressed the smoky air down like a damp, choking mantle.

Porthios ordered Nalaryn to make camp at a nearby stream. He would enter the town alone to penetrate its defenses and find out what he could about any elves being held there. Unarmed as he was, he probably could have used the main gate with no more hindrance than a bribe to the guards, but that would mean submitting to a search—an intolerable notion—so he chose a stealthier course.

He circled away from the gate, moving carefully over the open killing ground beneath the walls while watching the parapet above. Lord Olin had built the stockade quickly. His men hadn’t bothered leveling the ground first, so some places were closer to the top of the wall than others. Porthios found a spot where the sharpened points of the stockade were only eight feet above the ground. He backed until he came up against a line of bark-covered lean-tos then ran at the stockade wall.

He leaped and jammed his right foot onto the scant toehold offered by the stump of a branch sawed off the side of one of the stockade palings.

His muscles screamed, and his lips drew back in a grimace of pain. The hand-to-mouth existence in the woodlands and the ravages of his wounds had left him weakened. Tight, scarred skin pulled over his emaciated frame as he levered himself upward.

The pain was unbelievable, but just as fierce was Porthios’s will. He flung his left hand at the wall of logs. His nails bit into the wood through his gloves. With his right hand, he reached higher, finding a chink between two timbers. When at last he grasped the rough-sawn peak of the stockade, he felt a warm wetness soaking through his gloves. His hands left dark stains on the wood. Still he moved with deliberate care, making certain no one had observed him. He finally dropped onto the battlement and lay still. He trembled all over and his gloves were stiff with drying blood, but he was inside.

This was the secret of Porthios’s new life dogged indifference to any level of pain and the willingness to go where others dared not. He’d lived long enough with his disfigurement to have given up luxuries such as fear or worry. What had he to fear? His own body was a horror worse than death.

The only sentinel in sight was a human seated in a plank sentry box twenty paces along the wall. A dented pot helmet rested over his eyes, and he snored with great dedication. At his feet a clay jug lay on its side. The sentry wasn’t going to awaken any time soon.

Porthios sidled up to the sentry box. Pulling the torch from its bracket, he dropped it to the hard-packed ground outside the stockade. It went out. Keeping clear of the snoring sentinel, he squatted in the narrow sentry box and carefully peeled the bloody gloves from his hands. He rinsed his gloves in the filthy water of the guard’s fire bucket. Lifting the discarded clay jug, he heard liquid sloshing within. He poured it over his hands.

Unfortunately it wasn’t wine, but brandy, and it burned like vitriol on his insulted hands. Violent words bubbled in his throat, but he choked them down as he shook his stinging hands to dry them. Ablutions done, he tucked the damp gloves into his sash and slipped out of the sentry box. He descended the ladder to the ground.

By night Samustal was busy. The clang of smiths’ hammers striking anvils mixed with incoherent shouts of revelry and the sound of glass shattering. Dogs barked and donkeys brayed. Porthios hoped he wouldn’t encounter any animals. Human senses were feeble compared to those of elves, so wily raiders such as Samuval and his lieutenants kept packs of fierce hounds with them in Qualinesti. Dogs could see or scent elves where a human never would.

The elaborate arbors of Bianost had been hacked down and its famous gardens turned into pasturage for war-horses. Free fountains, found in every square of a Qualinesti town, were broken, and the basins were filled with garbage. Over everything hung the same ugly stench he had detected while still in the woods outside of town.

Evidence of looting and violence was everywhere. No glass remained in the street-level windows of any house, and the openings were boarded over. If any of the original inhabitants remained, they didn’t dare show any sign of life to the marauding brigands outside. Some houses had been burned out, leaving only blackened shells, like the gaping mouth of a corpse. The smell of fire still clung to the ruins. Every gutter was clogged with broken stones, burned timbers, smashed crockery, and innumerable rats, living and dead.