So the guards weren’t just tired and hungry and scared of what the Storad had to offer. Now they had a bunch of clueless people milling about, people who probably had no idea what they were doing and were only getting in the way. But at least they were there, and they’d learn soon enough.
Perak arrived, wrapped up in a couple of thick woollen robes that looked like they could keep out the end of the world. He had that dreamy look to him again. The one that usually meant I was about to get dropped in it.
Pasha was there too, looking worn at the edges. His monkey grin was fixed to his face as though he’d nailed it there, but fresh marks across his fingers, new bruises along his wrists where he no longer took care to keep his cuffs pulled down over his brands, told their own story. Those wrists were thin too, thinner even than they should have been, and his jacket flapped around a frame that had never been big and was now almost skeletal. He looked like a walking corpse.
The three of us gathered under a Glow light in the shelter of an office that usually held the guards checking goods going in and out. At least it had a brazier to warm it, but it was a mean one and all it did was stop my nose from turning blue. Malaki and the last remaining sergeant of the guards looked over our shoulders at what Pasha had brought. A large sheet of thick paper, much creased and filled with pencil markings that had been scratched in, crossed out and drawn over.
“Here’s the gate.” Pasha’s voice cracked, but he swallowed hard and tried again. “And here’s Jake. Two of her guys left with her, that’s all.”
He pointed to what could have been a group of boulders. Or possibly a tree. Whatever Pasha’s talents, they didn’t include drawing. Whichever, it was on the far side of the valley, where the wind whipped down over the mountains like a knife to saw through your bones.
“Did she have any kind of weather gear?” I asked, but Pasha gave me a don’t-be-stupid-she-didn’t-expect-to-be-camping-Outside look so I shut up.
It didn’t take him long to point out all the relevant information that Jake had managed to give him. Where the main force was, what sort of weapons they had – at least a third of the Storad had the flamers they’d used before – where their leader was billeted, and where Dench was. He, it seemed from what she’d managed to overhear or otherwise weasel out of some unlucky bastard, wasn’t exactly welcome, more tolerated. From what little we knew of them, the Storad had a funny kind of code and to them Dench had sold his own men out. That made him a traitor and, while useful, not to be trusted.
Malaki and the sergeant pored over the map and asked a load of technical questions which Pasha stumbled answers to. Malaki cocked an eye my way and I tried not to flinch. Not very successfully, because old habits die very hard indeed.
“What exactly is our objective here, Your Grace?” he asked.
Perak looked long and hard at Pasha and me before he gave his answer. “Twofold, captain. One: those reinforcements on their way? We want them to find nothing of use when they enter the valley. No troops, no camp. Nothing.”
The captain raised his eyebrows at that. Perak never wanted anything done by halves.
“And second?”
“Second, the captain of my personal guard is out there with two of her men. I would like them back.”
“That’s —”
“What your orders are, captain. This could actually be to our advantage, if we play it right. You know where their leader is billeted. Take him out. And Dench too. Jake and Pasha can also keep you apprised of any changes in the situation as and when they occur. But I want her and those men back, understood?”
I was hard pressed not to grin – someone else was getting dropped in the shit for a change, and it was much more gratifying to see it from the outside.
Malaki threw me an evil look before he and the sergeant left.
Perak deflated after they’d gone, and I realised his commanding tone had been at least half bravado. “All right. Pasha, you go down to the new recruits. I reckon they’ll take better to someone who isn’t a guard or Special. And then —”
And then it was too late. Any plans we might have made flew out of the window as a big, fat crack reverberated below us, followed by a series of screams.
They’d fixed the machine I’d bent, and it had taken just one shot to break the inner gates. They were in, and killing anyone in front of them.
Perak and I raced to a window. The inner gate was off its hinges and Storad were running amok below, guns firing, flamers burning every man they could reach. Pasha groaned behind us – every man’s thoughts were in his head, all their pain, panic, everything. I’ve never known quite how he managed to stay sane through it all.