The Blinding Knife(264)

“Right,” Teia said.

Lem filled himself with blue luxin, then leaned over conspiratorially to Teia. “There’s something in the water,” he said.

How did this freak get into the Blackguard?

He’s a valuable freak. Like me.

Lem extended a hand and waited. He was chanting numbers under his breath. “Forty-one, fifty-three, forty-seven, fifty-nine, no, fifty-three, fifty-nine, sixty-one, seventy-one, no…”

A hammer of blue luxin shot from his hand and pierced the stone. It stuck, a horizontal bar connected to a spike sunk deep into the stone. The bar would make a good hand- or foothold. He checked it, pulling on it to make sure there was no play, then took a deep breath. He swept a hand down and eight more of the spikes leapt from his hands in order. It would make an admirable ladder.

Blue luxin—shot into rock. Holy hells. Just when Teia thought she couldn’t get any more impressed with the Blackguards.

Lem smiled at Teia; then, as if noticing he was making eye contact, he looked away. “True name Will, you see.”

Teia saw.

At Commander Ironfist’s gesture, Teia climbed the makeshift ladder. She was almost to the top when she heard the scrape of iron over rock and someone inside barking orders. The window was an open slot above her head. Then she saw a cannon poke out of the window. She clamped her hands over her ears an instant before the cannon fired.

The pressure wave nearly blew her off the makeshift ladder. And that shot was followed by half a dozen others, all around the semicircle of the fort. The cannons all rolled back out of sight from the kick of the shots, but when Teia raised her head to see if she could get a count of the men loading the cannons through the thick smoke—paryl cutting through it easily—she saw that the windows were barred. There was enough space for the cannons to be rolled forward and poke through the bars but not enough for the Blackguards to climb in. Maybe, maybe after a shot, a person could crawl through the wide area in the bars that the cannon occupied when it was forward.

So, crawl in front of a cannon and hope there was enough space, and attack armed men who would all be looking your way.

Teia felt rather than heard another set of handholds shiver into the rock next to her, going around the great windows up to the top of the fort. Looking down, she waved to Commander Ironfist that they wouldn’t be able to get in through the windows. Lem was already firing out another ladder to bracket the other side of the windows.

Above the rock, the fort continued in several floors of wooden towers. Teia was glad she wasn’t afraid of heights, because it was getting dizzying. There was a flat spot wide enough for three people to stand where rock and wood met. The heavy timbers of the fort’s wooden walls were sunk in deep holes drilled directly into the red rock. Teia used her paryl to look through the walls. She couldn’t see through the wood itself, but in the spaces where bark pressed against bark, she could catch glimpses. Even then it was cloudy—but she couldn’t see anyone on the other side.

A Blackguard joined her, and she saw that others were clambering up the ladder on the other side. Teia looked down and saw the soldiers still standing by the little gate below them, looking out at the sea. If those men turned around to watch their guns fire—and it was quite a sight, so it was entirely possible—they would see the Blackguards in full view. But for a moment as the fort’s guns pounded, Teia looked at what the soldiers were watching unfold on the waves. Ships were afire—mostly the Chromeria’s ships that had sailed too close to the fort.

The rest of the fleet was heading for a gap at the middle of the neck. The Color Prince’s small ships—Teia didn’t know enough about ships to identify them—were fleeing from that area. But most of the Chromerian fleet wasn’t going to make it. Teia had seen how far the fort’s guns reached, and with some of the fleet only turning now, they’d be in range of the guns for ten or fifteen more minutes. The fort would manage hundreds of shots in that time. Orholam have mercy. Teia turned away and, far to the west, thought she could see the whisper of two skimmers crossing the waves, coming back to join the battle. Had they not found the green bane?

“How many soldiers?” the Blackguard asked Teia. He meant inside. She shook herself. She could do nothing about the crises and stupidity out there except help stop the guns up here.

“I don’t see any,” she whispered.

“Maybe we have a chance then.” The man gestured over to the other team, and Teia saw that there were eight people lined up on that ladder, and six more below her. The Blackguard—Teia didn’t know his name—was drafting a charge against the wooden wall, placed off to the side as far as he dared.