The cloud loomed above the cone-shaped mounds. Closer, yet not as close as it should have been.
'Nether! Are there soldiers on Aren's walls?'
'Aye, not an inch to spare—'
'The gates?'
'No.'
'How close are we up there?'
'A thousand paces – people are running now—'
'What in Hood's name is wrong with them?'
He stared again at the dust cloud. 'Fener's hoof! Nether, take your Wickans – ride for Aren!'
'What about you?'
'To Hood with me, damn you! Go! Save your children!'
She hesitated, then spun her horse around. 'You three!' she barked at the Wickan youths. 'With me!'
He watched them drive their weary horses forward along one edge of the Way, sweeping past the stumbling, pitching refugees.
The train had stretched out, those fleeter of foot slipping ever farther ahead. The elderly surrounded the historian, each step a tortured struggle. Many simply stopped and sat down on the road to await the inevitable. Duiker screamed at them, threatened them, but it was no use. He saw a child, no more than eighteen months old, wandering lost, arms outstretched, dry-eyed and appallingly silent.
Duiker rode close, leaned over in his saddle and swept the child into one arm. Tiny hands gripped the torn fragments of his shirt.
A last row of mounds now separated him and the tail end of the train from the pursuing army.
The flight had not slowed and that was the only evidence the historian had that the gates had, at last, opened to receive the refugees. Either that or they're spreading out in frantic, hopeless waves along the wall – but no, that would be a betrayal beyond sanity—
And now he could see, a thousand paces away: Aren. The north gates, flanked by solid towers, yawned for three-quarters of their height – the last, lowest quarter was a seething mass of figures, pushing, crowding, clambering over each other in their panic. But the tide's strength was too great, too inexorable to stopper that passageway. Like a giant maw, Aren was swallowing the refugees. The Wickans rode at either side, desperately trying to contain the human river, and Duiker could now see among them soldiers in the uniform of the Aren City Garrison joining in the effort.
And the army itself? The High Fist's army?
They stood on the walls. They watched. Row upon row of faces, figures jostling for a vantage point along the north wall's entire length. Resplendently dressed individuals occupied the platforms atop the towers flanking the gates, looking down at the starved, bedraggled, screaming mob that thronged the city entrance.
City Garrison Guards were suddenly among the last of those refugees still moving. On all sides around Duiker, he saw grim-faced soldiers pick people up and carry them at a half-jog towards the gates. Spotting one guardsman bearing the insignia of a captain, the historian rode up to him. 'You! Take this child!'
The man reached up to close his hands around the silent, wide-eyed toddler. 'Are you Duiker?' the captain asked.
'Aye.'
'You're to report to the High Fist immediately, sir – there, on the left-hand tower—'
'That bastard will have to wait,' Duiker growled. 'I will see every damned refugee through first! Now run, Captain, but tell me your name, for there may well be a mother or father still alive for that child.'
'Keneb, sir, and I will take care of the lass until then, I swear it.' The man then hesitated, freed one hand and gripped Duiker's wrist. 'Sir ...'
'What?'
'I'm – I'm sorry, sir.'
'Your loyalty's to the city you've sworn to defend, Captain—'
'I know sir, but those soldiers on the walls, sir – well, they're as close as they're allowed to get, if you understand me. And they're not happy about it.'
'They're not alone in that. Now get going, Captain Keneb.'
Duiker was the last. When the gate finally emptied, not a single breathing refugee remained outside the walls, barring those he could see well down the road, still seated on the cobbles, unable to move, drawing their last breaths – too far away to retrieve, and it was clear that the Aren soldiers had been given strict orders about how far beyond the gate they were permitted.
Thirty paces from the gate and with the array of guards standing in the gap watching him, Duiker wheeled his horse around one final time. He stared northward, first to the dust cloud now ascending the last, largest barrow, then beyond it, to the glittering spear that was the Whirlwind. His mind's eye took him farther still, north and east, across rivers, across plains and steppes, to a city on a different coast. Yet the effort availed him little. Too much to comprehend, too swift, too immediate this end to that extraordinary, soul-scarring journey.
