News that she would soon be transferred to Pireth Vanguard far to the north, did little to change Jill's sullen mood. By all reports, the weather was better on the northern side of the Gulf of Corona, more alive, with brisk winds and a greater change of the season. In Pireth Tulme, even the winter was one long gray sheet of clouds and cold rain, differing from the summer only in terms of temperature.
But Jill had settled into a routine here, akin to the continually gloomy season. Each day seemed as the last, an existence of perpetual watch and work. Seconds, minutes, and hours seemed to drag on endlessly, and yet, at the same time, once the weeks had passed, it seemed as if they had flown away.
The incident at the Waylaid Traveler had brought some measure of excitement, some break in the routine. Jill had taken the image of the mad friar back with her, could hear his words still, and found in them a kinship to that which lay in her own heart. There was no sense of duty or honor in Pireth Tulme, none in the Kingsmen or the Coastpoint Guards, none in all of Honce-the-Bear, she feared, or in all of wide Corona. And now this man, for speaking the truth with a level of enthusiasm that exceeded even the orgies in Pireth Tulme, this man, who would not be surprised by the tragedy that had touched young Jill's life, who would have expected it and called for preparation against it, this man, this holy prophet, was tagged "mad."
Jill sighed deeply every time she considered the man who had called himself the hound of ill omen. His words rang so true in her ears, echoing in the quiet lulls between the groans and shrieks that endlessly emanated from the rooms behind her. The mad friar foresaw disaster; Jill only wished that he had sung out his tune in a small frontier village several years ago.
Would the people of that village have heeded his warnings? Probably no more so than the soldiers of Pireth Tulme, their party resuming from the moment they returned from Tinson.
But despite her feelings, Jill kept her vigilant watch, day after day, often long into the night. And she kept her honor and virtue, refusing to give in to the temptations of the celebration, refusing to surrender to the hopelessness -- and that precisely was the way Jill viewed the hedonism around her. The soldiers of Pireth Tulme engaged in the revelry, the pleasures of the flesh, to avoid noticing their empty souls. They had sacrificed their hearts, so to speak, for their loins.
So be it. Jill stoically suffered the barbs of her comrades, particularly from Warder Miklos Barmine, who seemed to covet her all the more since she would not give in.
Perhaps Pireth Vanguard would be better, she sometimes dared to hope; but inevitably, her wishes fell back on the dark reality that was life in Honce-the- Bear in God's Year 824.
It was a gray morning -- no surprise there -- with Jill on the wall, seated between crenelations, her legs dangling over the two hundred-foot drop, her gaze on the dreamy mist that hung over Horseshoe Bay. Pireth Tulme was especially quiet after a night of tremendous drinking, a night which Jill had spent on the tower roof, quietly tucked under the beam of the fortress' lone catapult, her blanket tight about her.
She kept her senses tuned totally to the present, thinking of nothing but the rocky pillars standing like quiet sentinels in the foggy bay, the continual lap of the ebb tide waves against the rocks so far below, the occasional bleat of a sheep in the sloping field on the other side of the fortress.
And of the square sail that was drifting her way through the gray mist.
She scrambled to her feet and leaned out over the battlement, peering hard out to sea. It was indeed a sail, moving toward Pireth Tulme and neither in nor out of the Gulf of Corona. Jill's first instinct was to find some way to warn the obviously wayward craft. The fortress did have a signal barrel, a cask of volatile ingredients -- though it hadn't been used in so many years that Jill feared it wouldn't even burn brightly -- that was designed for signaling the larger fortress of Kingsmen some dozen miles inland, close beside the catapult. Jill realized that she wouldn't likely rouse enough help to get the barrel up in the air in time, and so she began waving her arms and calling out loudly, warning the ship's crew of the rocks and the impending disaster.
How Jill's mouth dropped open in shock when the vessel responded with the swish of its own catapult, a huge rock smashing against the cliff face some thirty feet or so below her!
It was exactly the situation for which the young soldier had trained all these years, just as Jill had imagined it might happen. And yet, for some reason, it seemed all too unreal for Jill. She stood there another long moment, perfectly stunned.
She noted then that the vessel was not alone, but was moving in accord with other craft, low to the water. One -- at least one -- had already gone by Pireth Tulme, making for the beach of Horseshoe Bay, and two flanked the sailing ship on the right, a third on its left.
A second ball soared in, this one soaring high over the fortress wall, and over the back wall as well, bouncing down the green field.
Jill cried out at the top of her lungs, then again a moment later, the ships moving ever closer, when she heard no response. She could see the activity on the deck of the sailing ship now, small forms darting this way and that, tacking hard to put the large caravel in between the bay's many sentry stones. She noted their red berets.
"Powries," she muttered under her breath. She had no time to wonder where they could have stolen or captured the ship; she cried out again, then turned to view the tower door.
There should have been a second sentry there, the relaying voice to the soldiers within. Jill shook her head, her short shock of blond hair bouncing about. Frustration boiled in the young woman, mingling with desperation. Another shot came thundering in, this one scoring a hit on Pireth Tulme's front wall, taking down some stones.
Jill ran along the wall, angling for the door. She noted the bay as she went, saw that the low craft was nearing the beach and that another was already there, its hatch open and dozens of redcapped dwarves pouring onto the shell- strewn sand!
Yet another shot came in as Jill grabbed the heavy door's latch and pulled it wide, this missile not of stone, nor pitch, but a jumble of dozens of wide- flying grapnels.
"Oh, damn," she sputtered; seeing many of the hooks gaining a firm hold on the walls. She screamed into the tower then, calling for all hands to the walls, warning of powries in the bay.
Then she ran, drawing her sword, cursing at every step. They had been caught unaware; she noted no allies had yet exited the tower even as she got back to the front wall. Likely, half the soldiers either didn't believe that call or were simply too drunk to heed it, and the other half probably couldn't even find their damned weapons!
The ropes were tight from the ship to the wall, with lines of dwarves on each, moving steadily with surprising strength, hanging under, hands and ankles locked about the cord. Jill first tried to dislodge the grapnel, but found that it was too tightly secured, with too much weight on the heavy line. Then she went at the line ferociously, hacking and chopping, chipping her sword from one ill-aimed blow, the blade ringing off the stone wall. The ropes were thick and strong, and Jill knew then that she could not cut them all down, could not cut more than one or two down before the evil powries began gaining the wall.
"Hurry!" she cried, glancing back to the open tower door.
Finally, Miklos Barmine wandered out, rubbing his eyes, blinking repeatedly as if the light, though the day was dim, stung him profoundly. He started to call out to Jill, to ask her what all the shouting was about, but he stopped, as he noted the woman at work on the heavy rope.
Another man came up behind the warder. "To the walls! To the walls!" Barmine cried desperately, and the man disappeared again into the blackness of the tower, crying out for his comrades.
A final hack from Jill sent the rope flying free, half a dozen powries splashing down hard into the cold waters. Jill ran to the next line but moved right past it, seeing that a dwarf was nearly to the wall some distance down. She got to the spot first, slashing the powrie hard as it tried to scramble to the stone. The creature grabbed on stubbornly, but Jill hit it again, right across the face, and it fell away, shrieking, to its doom.
Jill went to work on the rope. Soldiers were coming from the `tower by this point, but powries were coming over the front wall. Jill wasn't halfway through the heavy cord when she had to stop and run to fight another of the dwarves as it pulled itself onto the parapet. The creature drew a small sword but too late to parry the woman's first savage attack, Jill's sword slashing across the dwarf's eyes, blinding it. The dwarf countered viciously, but Jill had already stepped beside it, then behind it, and when the powrie finished its wild swinging, coming back to full defensive posture, Jill locked one arm over its shoulder, her other under its crotch, and lifted and twisted, sending it plummeting from the wall. She didn't even have time to slice once at that particular rope, though, for another dwarf was already running her way, hooting and howling, whipping a cudgel about in the air before it.
Charging soldiers met the red-capped dwarves all along the wall, battling fiercely. Jill saw a pair of dwarves go flying over, saw a man slump to his knees, hands clutching a mortal chest wound.
Then she was fighting again, hopping back from the swing of that nasty cudgel -- she saw more than a few spikes protruding from its wide end. On she came with a snarl, stabbing straight ahead with her sword, then, when that attack was neatly deflected, kicking her foot out beneath the sweep of the cudgel, connecting solidly with the dwarf's belly.
The powrie didn't even flinch, came right back to the offensive with one, two, and then a third swiping attack.
Jill was backing steadily, but realized that she would soon run out of room, for she sensed that another powrie was fast coming in at her back. She started ahead a step, then turned about abruptly, dropping to one knee and lunging ahead, her free hand catching the second dwarf's swinging sword arm, her own sword driving deep into its chest.
Jill came up in a short run, bowling the wounded powrie away, then she pivoted again and came in hard, moving too close for the cudgel to score a solid hit and accepting the weakened blow in exchange for her own attack, a stab into the dwarf's throat.
Breathing hard, the woman surveyed the scene.
They could not win. The Coastpoint Guards of Pireth Tulme were fighting well, but they were badly outnumbered and they had lost their one advantage: the walls. If they had been prepared, if they had been alert, then most of the powrie lines would have been cut before the dwarves ever gained the wall. If the soldiers had drilled for such an attack, then their defenses would have been coordinated, then the signal barrel would already be in the air, spinning high and far for reinforcements. Jill did see that a detachment of six soldiers was at the catapult, three working the levers, three desperately trying to hold a handful of powries at bay. She should get to them, she realized, but she understood, too, that there was no chance of that. Fighting was general all along the wall, more and more powries pouring in, and another group, those from the two barrelboats that had gone into Horseshoe Bay, screaming wildly and charging up the sloping field behind the fortress.
Pireth Tulme was lost.
Jill saw Warder Miklos Barmine shouting commands from the wall near the tower, powries swarming all about him. He took a vicious hit, then another, but responded with a slash of his own, knocking one powrie from the wall. One of Jill's female comrades came to the tower door then, but she was swept away by a host of bloody caps as they charged in.
Barmine continued to scream, though his words soon became but grunts and howls of agony. He was bloodied in a dozen place and took hit after hit, though he stubbornly continued to swing that sword.
Then Jill lost sight of him, finding herself facing another dwarf. This one came in hard and, thinking that it had the woman by surprise, launched a wild sidelong swing. Jill dodged easily, then kicked out behind the flying weapon, just nicking the powrie on the back but solidly enough so the overbalanced dwarf fell from the parapet eight feet to the ground below.
Another was quick to take its place, snapping off a series of thrusts with its short sword. Jill managed to glance back toward the tower, saw the host of powries flooding in, saw Barmine kneeling, his face, his arms, all his body covered in blood.
Spurred by the gruesome sight, she attacked fiercely. Up went her sword, cutting across left to right, then back again, then another strong backhand, each swing sounding with the ring of metal on metal. She shifted her right foot forward with the last stroke, then turned her blade and came straight ahead, driving the powrie back. But another dwarf was behind it to bolster the defense, and another behind that. Jill heard the dying scream of a soldier to her rear and fully expected that she would soon be overwhelmed.
She started forward, then leaped atop the wall, hopping from high point to high point, once over the surprised powrie's stabbing sword. She outdistanced all three with a few long strides, moving to the far corner of the front wall. There was yet another rope secured at that point, the last dwarf on it barely five feet from the wall.
Jill glanced back at the carnage. Many powries were down, but more remained, and each of the still-standing soldiers was surrounded, battling desperately. Barmine was kneeling but offering no resistance, a powrie wiping its beret across his face.
Jill winced as the dwarf lifted its cap, up high and in the same motion, slammed its spiked cudgel into the dying warder's face.
She had seen enough.
She could have taken out the dwarf on the rope, but doing so would have allowed the three pursuing her to catch her. Jill sheathed her sword instead, pulled her belt off, and leaped out from the wall, beyond the climbing dwarf. She caught the rope with one hand, barely, and hung on with all her strength, two hundred feet of empty air below her.
The powrie immediately reversed direction, deftly turning about on the rope with sure, strong grips. Its three companions, with typical powrie loyalty, went to work at once on the grapnel and rope, caring not at all if they dropped a comrade along with the dangerous woman.
Jill had no time for a fight. She kicked out to the side, trying to keep the dwarf at bay, but her main focus was on getting her belt, held fast in her other hand, up over the rope. She looped it up on one try, but lost her grip on the rope and started to tumble.
Her free hand somehow caught hold of the other end of the belt. She was holding both ends now, hanging lower, and then she was sliding away from her enemy, sliding fast into the mist, toward the ship, which was holding steady more than a hundred feet from shore.
The other end of the rope was fixed to the yard of the mainmast. There were many powries on that deck, though none had, as yet, spotted her. She figured she'd let go as she came over the prow, in the hope that she would land on deck clear enough for her to roll a few times to absorb the impact. If she could get across the deck to the stern catapult or more particularly, to the cauldrons of pitch and the firepit near the catapult, then she might be able to cause more than a little havoc.
Her plan was moot, as it turned out, for as Jill approached the front of the craft, the rope gave way, and suddenly her descent was much sharper than her forward momentum. She let out a scream, thinking that she would slam headlong into the ship's prow.
Luck was with her and she hit the cold sea short of the ship. She came up sputtering, her mouth full of water, her ears still filled with the sound of dying men ringing down from the fortress walls. Anger welled within her, directed at both the powries and her own comrades. Had they been prepared, this disaster would not have befallen them. Had they heeded their own code of conduct, the powries would have been repulsed.
She had lost her sword in the fall, but Jill didn't care. Feral growls escaped her lips as she started to swim around the vessel, moving all the faster for fear that her limbs would soon be too numb to propel her. She got around to the stern and found the anchor line, a heavy rope down from the port side. Her arms aching from cold and weariness, she grabbed hold and pulled herself up the ten fit to the rail. She peeked over even as the catapult fired again, a ball of flaming pitch soaring up over Pireth Tulme's wall. Jill noted that the missile was far more likely to burn a host of powries than any human, but the dwarves hardly seemed to care, howling with glee as they loaded the next ball.
Three of them had the ball, cradled in a heavy blanket, up above their heads near the basket when Jill hit them with a flying body block. They fell away toward the taffrail, but could not let go of their load. Over the rail the pitch ball went, taking the three powries with it.
A fourth was on Jill in a moment, grabbing for her throat. She couldn't believe the weight of the diminutive thing! Nor the strength! In an instant, the powrie had her on her back and was choking her hard.
She tried desperately to break its grip, locked her fingers about its thumbs and turned them outward.
She might as well have been pulling against iron shackles.
Jill changed tactics and began slugging the dwarf in the face instead, then poking for its eyes. It held on tight and even tried to bite her fingers.
Soon Jill's hands were flapping inconsequentially at the powrie's barrel- like torso, her strength fast deserting her. She would die as Pireth Tulme died, she realized, again silently cursing the unpreparedness, the slovenly men and women to whom she had been forced to entrust her life. She would die, not of any fault of her own, but because the Coastpoint Guards had grown weak.
Her hands flailed wildly; darkness crept into the edges of her vision. One hand banged against the powrie's solid waists against a metal ball above the dwarf's belt.
The hilt of a dagger.
Jill had struck the dwarf four times before it realized that it was being stabbed. With a howl, it finally let go, scrambling about to evade the jabbing dagger.
Jill wounded it again, between its flailing arms and right in its chest, and then again, higher, in its throat. The dwarf rolled away, but Jill could hardly move to follow. She lay there for what seemed like minutes, then finally found the strength to come up. to her elbows.
The powrie was near the rail, facedown.
Jill took in another blessed gulp of air and staggered to her feet. She turned to the catapult, its arm low and ready to fire, then looked at the vats of burning pitch, wondering what mischief she might cause.
The powrie slammed her hard from behind, driving her into the bent beam. Jill came about, dagger slashing, cutting a line across the dwarf's face, just inches above the garish cut she had put in its throat. The dwarf fell back a couple of steps, but came on again. . .
Jill dropped to her knees and lowered her shoulder, accepting the impact. She curled her legs under her and lifted the dwarf high, stepping fast and shoving with all her strength, putting the creature into the catapult basket. Jill rolled away immediately, falling to the side, grabbing at the release pin and pulling hard.
The powrie was almost out of the basket when the catapult fired, launching the dwarf in a wild, spinning flight straight up, arms and legs out wide.
Many other dwarves heard the scream, took note of the curious missile, and turned to the stern deck; Jill was out of time. She kicked over the pitch barrels, spilling one onto the capstan that held the anchor line and knocking another down the stairs to the lower main deck. Then she turned to the taffrail, thinking her only escape to be the cold water.
Again sheer luck saved her, for she found a boat hanging from the stern. She had it falling free in an instant, then, with powries scrambling up to the stern deck, with fires growing all about her on the capstan and on the catapult, she leaped out as far as she could, taking care to avoid the burning pitch that was floating in the water and the three dwarves, bobbing low, barely keeping their heads above the waves. They made for the boat as did Jill, the woman overtaking one and easily dispatching it with her borrowed dagger.
Powries weren't so tough in the water, she noted as she closed on the second. She swam right by that one, realizing if she delayed, the third would get to the boat before her. She caught that last floundering dwarf, stabbing it hard on the shoulder, then swimming right by it, grabbed desperately for the small craft.
A crossbow quarrel skimmed the water right beside her head.
Jill worked to get behind the boat, to use it as a barrier against the powrie archers on the deck. She knew that the angle was all wrong, though, that they were too high above her, the boat too close, and that they would get fairly clear shots no matter where she moved.
And she knew from the profound numbness that was creeping into her limbs that she had to get out of the water, and quickly.
The groan of wood alerted her to the powries' newest problem: She dared to peer over the small boat's rail, and saw that the ship's anchor line had burned through, and the ship, caught on a swell, had swung hard about. Suddenly, the archers had more on their minds than the woman in the water.
Jill started to climb into the boat, but had to stop and turn to strike again at the struggling powrie. Finally she was in the boat, setting the oars, then pulling away with all her strength, the third powrie frantically trying to catch up.
It got near enough for Jill to slam it on the head with one of the oars.