Chapter 3 #6
“I saw the well house,” she said. “Out of a window, going down one of those narrow staircases. You wouldn’t have seen it because you were making a fuss about the stairs being narrow and your eyes were glued to your feet the whole time. But I saw it. And if there’s a well house, there’s a well.”
“Brilliant,” I said. “So now what we need to do is—”
“No use to us, of course,” she said. “Because the well house was in the middle of the central quadrangle thing, so I’m guessing the well goes straight down into the mountain.
Which means the only way to get into it is from inside the citadel.
Because of classical military theory, presumably. So, no use to us at all.”
Oh, I thought. “Turning to sewage—”
“They chuck it over the wall,” she said, in a bored voice.
“It lands in a ditch in Poor Town and runs down a channel. And before you ask, I know that because of the huge great big fullers’ yard at the foot of the wall on the south-eastern elevation.
And the canal that runs from there straight to the docks.
The fullers have the piss, and they scoop the shit into barrels and load it on barges and ship it round the island to fertilise the vineyards and the fig orchards. ”
“Fine. No use to us, then?”
“None whatsoever.”
I took a deep breath. “I am not,” I said, “creeping up on the gatehouse and stealing a guardsman’s uniform. Is that quite clear? Absolutely not. No way.”
The Sherden, now known as the Angkolans, are a short people – five foot six, five eight makes you a giant. I’m six foot three. My new uniform, therefore, was not a good fit.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “The knee-length mailshirt barely covers my arse and I can only just move my arms. We’re supposed to be the royal guard, for crying out loud.”
“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, loud enough to wake the dead. “All right, lose the mailshirt.”
Which left us with a very tall civilian being escorted by a very short soldier. The object of the exercise, I felt constrained to point out, was to be inconspicuous. She glared at me, but in such a way as to concede the point. “Fine,” she snarled. “Plan B.”
“We haven’t got a—”
Turned out we had, though I can’t say I remember agreeing to it. Plan B was to scale the citadel wall, in the dark, and climb in through a window, or, to be precise, an arrowslit.
“I can’t,” I told her. “Climbing things is a skill, like coppersmithing or playing the flute. I don’t know how to do it.”
Svangerd has patience, just as there is water in the desert. But not very much. “I do,” she said. “I shin up there and let down a rope, and you climb up it. You can climb a rope, can’t you?”
“If I’ve got to,” I said. “But I don’t think that’s the sort of wall you can just shin up.”
“Bullshit,” she said. “It’s rough-hewn stone blocks with layers of mortar between the courses.
We’re right next to the sea, and the salt air rots lime mortar for a pastime, and they repoint it on a rotation, you can tell by the colour, and the stretch of wall over the tannery yard hasn’t been done for years.
Nice ready-made handholds at regular intervals.
I can go up that like a rat up a drain. It’s only about forty feet and then there’s a nice window.
You can’t get through it, but I can, and then I’ll make my way up onto the battlement and throw down the rope. Piece of piss.”
I’ve never quite grasped why a piece of piss is supposed to be a good thing. “All right,” I said. “But for heaven’s sake be careful.”
She was. By the time she started to climb it was pitch dark, with only a tiny slice of moon – ideal, she explained to me, because you climb by feel, and if it’s dark the sentries can’t see you – and I lost sight of her almost immediately.
She’d ditched the scarlet cloak and mailshirt she’d stolen from the guard and resumed her black habit, so the only visible part of her was her bare feet.
I sat with my back to the wall and waited for either her or the rope to come tumbling down at me.
Usually when I have to sit waiting motionless and torn to shreds by anxiety I read a book, but that was impossible, so I recited the Metrical Psalms under my breath – not praying, I hasten to add, because there’s nobody to pray to, but there’s lots of stuff in the psalms about helping us in our hour of need and rescuing us from the grip of the oppressor, and a bit of positive thinking never did anyone any harm.
I was about a third of the way through the Seventeenth (the people who dwelt in darkness: appropriate or what?) when I realised I had company.
“On your feet,” said a voice, and someone opened the doors of a dark lantern, drenching me in nasty bright light.
Nuts, I remember thinking, and I launched myself at the horrible glare.
Either I tripped or somebody tripped me; in any case, I landed full length on my face on the very hard ground, and someone put his boot on my neck. Here we go again.
They pulled me up – they plural, at least four of them, plus the joker with the lantern, who held it up close to my face, which meant I could see his. “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. “You again.”
“Idiot,” replied the man with the nose. “Come on.”
Four plus one makes five, and I’d counted five wise men in King Aviragus’s throne room.
Five distinguished looking but middle-aged to elderly diplomats, the sort who fold up neatly if you thump them just right.
Then I felt something sharp digging in just under my left shoulder blade.
I’d left it too long, as usual. In my shoes, Svangerd would’ve been halfway across town by now, with skinned knuckles.
“Are you sure?” asked the man with the nose. “The house red is actually surprisingly good. A bit robust for my taste, but a nice fruity nose and distinct grace notes of elderflower and apple.”
No, I didn’t want a drink. I wanted an answer.
“You know who we are,” the man with the nose said wearily.
“By the same token, we know who you are and precisely why you’re here and what you want.
What you don’t know,” he went on, “is that we’ve had new instructions from Division.
Apparently the plan’s been modified, and now we’re instructed to offer you our full cooperation. ”
I gazed at him. We were in the taproom of the King of Beasts in Goosefair, simply because it was the nearest bar to the tannery. “You’re kidding,” I said.
“Absolutely not.” He smiled at me. “My guess is, the eggheads at Division played with their abacuses and figured out the probabilities of Sister Svangerd breaking into the library and stealing the book, and decided that she’d probably succeed, and modified the plan accordingly.
Therefore we’re now on your side, body and soul, thick and thin, brothers in arms against the common foe. Isn’t that nice? Have a raisin.”
I didn’t want a raisin. “Is she all right? Is she safe?”
He shrugged. “No idea,” he said. “Presumably she is.” One of his colleagues nudged him and whispered in his ear.
“She’s fine,” he said. “No problems at all climbing the wall, had to hide in a linen press when a patrol went by but now she’s located the stairs to the battlements, and it should be all plain sailing from there.
” He was beaming at me. “It might interest you to know that the patrol would’ve found her if they hadn’t been distracted by a noise, which proved to be a lampstand falling over.
Actually, the lampstand was pushed. If it hadn’t been, Svangerd would’ve been obliged to kill the guards, and the whole North Tower would be absolute chaos by now.
As it is, she’s buzzing along merrily like a happy bee. ”
I tried to imagine what the nose would look like, bent through ninety degrees. “Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t mention it. After all, we’re on the same side.
Your success is our success. Talking of which,” he went on, “in about a quarter of an hour, after a bit more hiding in corners, she’ll reach the top of the battlements and let down the rope.
If you try and climb up it you’ll fall. Because of your value to the plan, you won’t actually break your neck, but you will break several other bits and pieces, and poor dear Svangerd will have to do the best she can on her own.
She’s a capable girl, but the outcome will not be optimal.
So we thought, how’d it be if we let you in by the side door, and you walked up the stairs like a civilised human being? ”
One of the reasons why I’m glad I’m not a believer is that, if I was, I’d be under an obligation to love my enemies. No way in hell could I do that, especially if they were anything like the man with the nose. “Oh, go on,” he said. “You know how you hate climbing ropes.”
“I’m leaving,” I said, standing up. “If you follow me, I’ll smash your face in.”
As I walked back to the tannery, I couldn’t help feeling a bit stupid.
How the Loyal Opposition people know things I have no idea, but they do.
So, if they reckoned I was about to fall off the rope and break bones, they were probably right, in which case it was the height of stupidity on my part to refuse their offer of an open door and a relatively painless walk up many flights of horrible winding stairs.
On the other hand – no, of course they weren’t the devil’s minions, because there is no devil, but accepting favours from them, even if they couldn’t possibly be agents of the Evil principle, couldn’t be right, could it?
Define right. Or, rather, don’t even try, because it’ll only boil your brains out through your ears, and you need to concentrate if you want to stand any chance at all of climbing this rope –
The first ten feet were fine. The second ten feet were just about all right, though I could feel all the strength draining out of my hands. Then I lost my grip –