Law of the Broken Earth(72)
The guardsman must have read some of this in her face because his expression became, if possible, even more grim. He said, “You two, lead them off if they come this way. My lady, if you will please come with me.” He led Mienthe farther down the lane. “There’ll be a side street or alley,” he muttered to her. “We’ll get around them in the dark. Even if they do spot us, they’ll not look too close. A man and a woman fleeing the town, that’s nothing to draw attention. Here, lady, watch your step.”
Mienthe was well past worrying about a little mud. The street was too narrow for the moonlight to provide any illumination; it was too dark to see even the cobbles of the street. It was so dark there was a constant risk of running headlong into an unexpected wall, but she could hear—she thought she could hear—the tramp of soldiers entering the town. The sounds echoed oddly in the narrow streets so that it was hard to tell their direction and distance, but she was sure it was soldiers. Boots, mostly, and the unidentifiable sounds of a lot of men moving in company, but occasionally also the ring of shod hooves. That was bold, but then maybe the Linularinan soldiers had a few people who could speak to horses in that company; the gift wasn’t possessed only by the folk of Feierabiand, any more than straight light brown hair was possessed only by the people of Linularinum. But the sound of hooves made her check and turn her head, wishing she had an affinity for horses and could call one away from those soldiers.
“Lady!” whispered the guardsman, realizing Mienthe had paused. He, too, was all but invisible in the darkness.
Mienthe took a step forward.
Light bloomed beyond the guardsman, lamps carried high on poles so that their light shone out before the approaching soldiers—another company, or part of the same one, but either way wholly unexpected. The guardsman spun around, his hand going to his sword and then falling away because there were far too many soldiers to fight. But then he drew after all, setting himself in the middle of the narrow lane.
“No!” Mienthe cried, understanding that the guardsman meant to delay the Linularinan soldiers just that small time that might let her escape, and understanding as well that if he fought, he would die. “No!” she said again. “Don’t fight them!” Then she whirled and fled back the way they had come, hoping that once she was clear, the guardsman would let himself surrender, knowing that if she stayed he would certainly fight, and anyway she did not dare be captured herself.
Behind her, swords rang. Before her, the darkness offered not safety—there was no safety anywhere—but at least some measure of concealment, at least until she ran into the other company of Linularinan soldiers. She looked for a way to get away from the lane, to slip away sideways. She tested one door and then another, but both were locked and no one came when she pounded her hand against the doors. She dreaded every moment that she might see the shine of lamplight off the painted wood of the buildings and the damp cobbles, or hear the sounds of approaching soldiers. Above, the moonlight slid across the shingles of the roofs.
Ahead of her, Mienthe heard the flat sounds of boots on the cobbles. Light shone dimly, not yet near, but coming nearer. Behind her, she was almost certain she could hear more boots. She stopped, looked quickly about, and then leaped for a handhold on the windowsill of a house. The window was shuttered tight, but she got her foot up on the doorknob of the house and hauled herself upward. The windowsill provided her next foothold, and she tried hard not to think about falling—she would break her ankle on the cobbles and then she would certainly be caught—the moonlight picked out the details of the upper story of the building, but also mercilessly revealed Mienthe to anyone who glanced up from below. The upper windows were also shuttered, but besides the balcony there was a trellis with vines. The vines would never hold her weight, but she thought the trellis might, and anyway she could not find any other foothold.
Below her, the two companies of soldiers approached from opposite directions. They would meet almost directly below her, and then how long would it take someone to look up? Mienthe gingerly committed her weight to the trellis. The sweet scent of the flowers rose around her as she crushed the vines. It seemed to her that the fragrance alone would draw someone to gaze upward, and on this clear night there was no hope of clouds to veil the moon. Mienthe tried not to make a sound as she pulled herself upward, got first a hand and then a knee onto the balcony railing—the railing had seemed sturdier before she needed to balance on it. She laid one hand flat against the rough wood, reached upward with her other hand, and felt along the edge of the roof.