Reclamation

Cor managed to keep the reflexive jerk in her arms from tightening the reins. The oxen plodded forward toward the main gate.

"What's with you, Jay?" She tried to catch sight of him out of the corner of her eye, and still keep her other eye on the approaching gate.

"I think I know where that missing hundred went." He was looking past her shoulder, toward the heights. His face was still strained as he scanned the tops of the roofs and the distant walls.

"Are you going to tell me, or are you seeing scars on my hands?" The saying popped out before she could stop it. Her knuckles tightened on the reins and she had to just nod at the guards at the gates. Only one of them looked up. The other five had their eyes fixed on the commander coming down from the staircase alongside the wall.

The sledge jostled through the gate and Cor had to keep her eyes on the ruts in the half-dry road as well as the walls of the houses that defined the narrow streets. She pulled on the reins and whistled to the oxen to steer the sledge in something approaching the right direction.

"They're here," said Jay.

"What!" Cor glanced wildly from the street, to Jay and back again. She meant to tell him he had lost his mind, but her surroundings were beginning to penetrate through acclimatized eyes and her brain was starting to realize something was wrong.

Narroways was a noisy place, and this afternoon was no exception. There was noise and plenty of it. Shouting and hollering bounced off the close-packed buildings and cut through the steamy wind. Every blacksmith in the city seemed to be at his forge, hammering away. But there weren't any children on the stairways, just the tops of beads and glimpses of faces bobbing to and fro on the roofs. No pedestrians crowded the streets. No soldiers on their oxen jostled them aside. There was just the shouting and the clattering and…

"Skyman!" shouted a voice.

A stone whizzed past and Cor ducked. The oxen halted in confusion. Jay hauled open the sledge's canvas cover. The missing people spilled into the street like a flood down a canyon, driven by soldiers in the First City uniform. The noise hadn't been blacksmiths, but swords. People ran into the houses, trying to get out of the way of the fray, but some were making a stand, with whatever they had at hand. Bodies draped in ponchos so she couldn't tell if they were men or women surged around the soldier's oxen waving sticks and hatchets. The soldiers flailed with swords and clubs. Stones from slings shot through the air indiscriminately.

The lead oxen bellowed and reared, giving Cor something she could concentrate on. She hauled hard on the reins and whacked their broad backs with her stick, poking and shouting, reminding the stupid beasts that they were more afraid of her than of anything in front of them. The sledge lurched forward.

But there's a truce! her mind cried.

First City is a bunch of sticklers for…

First City is losing. Badly. But they knew Narroways couldn't afford to prolong the war. They were ready to risk two minor members of their Noble house in a gambit to knock what was left of Silver's support out from under her.

And they wouldn't feel it was much of a risk if they knew that Heart of the Seablade was a Heretic.

Cor shouted at the oxen and smacked at them with the reins. The big, stupid beasts bellowed and stamped forward. Hands grabbed her arm and for a split second she saw an angry round face and felt herself dragged off-balance. Jay almost fell forward and smashed a heavy fist across the stranger's mouth. The hands fell away and Cor regained her footing.

The oxen were panicking now, all of them fighting through the surging, clamoring mob to try to find enough room to run. Cor gave them all the rein she could. Animal instinct and a ton of mindless fear might just clear the way for them. Another pair of hands snatched at her. She smacked flesh with her driving stick and heard a voice howl. More hands. She struck out again. More screams, more white eyes, more confused colors on earth brown skin. She lashed out again and again, the noise of battle fading fast behind a ringing in her ears and a sick swirling in her head.

Jay loosened his jerkin and pulled out the gun.

He hunched beside Cor, drew a bead on the thickest ranks of the First City soldiers, and squeezed the trigger.

The soldiers of both sides exploded. Blood and flesh sprayed everywhere with the sound of the shots echoing between the houses. The fray turned into a stampede as they screamed and fled. Cor urged the oxen forward and they tried hard to break into a run to get away from the noise and the blood.