Stealing Into Winter - Graeme Talboys K.

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scenting the night air as it reached tentative fingers of freshness into the fusty interior. Distant voices, shouting; other sounds she could not identify wove a picture of chaos. If she could only free her foot…

      Shuffling forward, she began to work again at moving the wreckage. Swift movements, quiet so as to avoid attracting anyone’s attention. Her foot moved. If she could just twist it to the left, she thought, or maybe bend her knee, just so. And as she contorted herself, feeling freedom edge closer, there came a grating noise from behind her, followed by an enormous metallic crash.

      A dark shape loomed between Jeniche and the patch of starry sky. She pulled again at her foot as the escaped rapist leaned in close.

      ‘So, I can go fuck myself, can I?’

      A seemingly endless silence followed in which Jeniche saw the anger on his face turn to puzzlement and then an evil sneer. She looked down and realized she had lost the blanket again and that her tunic was gaping open, revealing far too much.

      ‘How about,’ grunted the hoarse voice, close to her face, ‘I fuck you, instead.’

      A hand groped its way to her leg.

      Her own hands clawed at the stony rubbish as the broken table was pulled from her trapped foot and she was dragged across the floor. Sour, urgent breath hissed into her face and she saw his pale, ravenous face in front of hers as her fingers gripped something sharp. Her feet were trapped again as he sat on her legs. Hands fumbled with her tunic.

      Frustration, anger, fear, and a blind desire to hurt powered the swing of her arm. He saw it coming and moved his head back. He didn’t move quickly enough. The torn metal base of the guard’s lantern caught his nose and ripped it from his face.

      Jeniche could hear him screaming as she scrambled up the loose scree of brickwork and stone toward the patch of sky. She could hear him screaming above the shouts that were louder now she was outside. Even when she climbed stone stairs up out of the courtyard and found herself on a flat roof, she could hear his howling. But the immediate and very personal threat he posed faded as she looked around and saw the city of Makamba on fire.

      For long, precious moments she ran from edge to edge of the roof, turning, looking, and trying to understand. In the darkness above her, things she could not see whistled past and tore into buildings in the Citadel and beyond, throwing debris in all directions. Arrows trailing flame arced in the night, finding dirt and oblivion, awnings and wood piles, jars of oil, flesh.

      All through the Citadel, across the docks, up along the great ridge of the Old City, and beyond to richer enclaves, buildings burned. Flames leapt and roared, casting angry light into the dark parts of the city. And everywhere she looked, people ran; shouting, crying, and brandishing buckets and weapons.

      Arrows fell with a clatter onto the roof where she stood, waking her from the distant nightmare. Wasting no more time, she ran and leapt the narrow gap between buildings onto a shallow-pitched pantile roof. The clay tiles clattered beneath her bare feet as she went up over the ridge and down the other side, her eyes trying to make sense of the unfamiliar roofscape as flame-shadows danced.

      Running along the edge of the roof, she looked down to the ground three floors below. The only way out of the Citadel was through one of the gates, and she knew she needed to get there quickly. There had been a lot of people down on the river front, pouring off barges. She doubted they were ships’ crew.

      At the corner of the building was a buttress. Without stopping to think about how narrow it was, she slipped over the side and shinned down, rolling into a small pool of shadow when she hit the ground, a yelp of pain bitten off behind tight clenched lips.

      In the chaos, she took a moment to massage her stubbed toes and survey the scene. The Citadel did not have a complex layout, but it was haphazard, having evolved from the original, walled trading settlement. With all the confusion and the need to look as if she belonged, she hobbled across to a main path where a bucket chain had been formed. As one bucket passed, she slipped across, grabbed another that had been dropped and headed toward the small customs house; found herself being jostled toward the main gate just as she had hoped.

      Torches flared in great iron brackets, lighting the main parade ground and gateway. The space was filled with men and horses and, to her astonishment, the main gates seemed wide open. For a moment she thought it was too late, that the Citadel had fallen, but then she saw that the great press of men were members of the city guard, newly arrived. And she also saw that the heavy gates were now slowly moving, blocking her only way out.

      A horse stepped sideways and pushed her against a wall before its rider calmed it. Used to the great beasts, she waited anxious seconds so as not to startle it again by dashing off. And then, with one eye on the gates and the other on the melee of dismounting soldiers, she began to weave her way across the parade ground. Dodging booted feet and pikestaffs, bumped and jostled, she pushed her way to the ever-narrowing gap, tripping as a clear run opened up in front of her.

      Hauled to her feet by a rough hand grasping her tunic, she turned ready to fight.

      ‘Get out, lad,’ said the soldier, not looking properly and making a mistake she was used to and often exploited. He marched her across to the gatehouse. ‘No place for you here,’ he added and pushed her out into the street. The gates slammed loudly behind her and she heard the first of the great locking bars fall into place.

      ‘May your gods protect you,’ she called as loudly as she could. And then ran off into the mayhem in the streets of the Old City.

       Chapter Two

      The Citadel, a sheer-sided mud-brick fort perched on the steep hillside, had long ago become the centre of protection for the Old City and the docks. Mostly the docks. Which was why it had been maintained through the centuries. The Old City on the other hand, as old parts of cities do, had degenerated to a maze of tiny streets, small markets, and battered-looking houses where the poorest and hardest-working lived. Jeniche loved it. It was like a gigantic, sprawling family house, full of squabbling, loving, cooking, eating, reeking humanity, replete with secret places. Even though she knew no one who lived there, she always felt as if she belonged.

      Tonight, it was different. Instead of a homely anarchy, the chaos of the place was driven by fear. The noise was confusing. Looks were hostile. She felt doors being closed against strangers. And all the time arrows fell and buildings burst and collapsed.

      After a brief moment to draw breath, she decided the best thing to do would be to get back up into the main part of Makamba, retrieve her stash from her hideaway in the stables and head out of the city. Thieving was precarious at the best of times, more so since taking that ill-starred amulet, as she had discovered. In a city crawling with soldiers, it could easily prove fatal.

      As she began to make her way uphill, moving from alley to alley and passage to passage, climbing walls, darting through cellars, the tone of the noise about her changed. She tried to place it and decided that the invaders must have by-passed the Citadel and attempted to breach the Old City defences.

      Spurred on, she went faster, emerging onto the main street that ran between the docks and the newer parts of the city at the top of the hill. And stopped short.

      A great length of the street seemed to be roofed with dancing fire, blazing cinders dropping to the cobbles, drifting in the warm breeze. Flags and bunting for the festival marking the visit of the God-King of the Tunduri people, flamed in the night. Paints and dyes lent their colour to the flames, blues and greens, yellows and reds, flickering and crackling.

      The ropes on one great banner gave way and the whole thing fell, writhing, turning like a dying picture-book dragon. It hit the street with a whumph and scattered fragments of blazing material in all directions. Women emerged from houses and shops with brooms to beat it out.

      Jeniche dodged on along the street, burning her feet on cinders, brushing them from her short hair as she ran. It seemed like a lifetime since she had wandered down this hill

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