Domes of Fire

Sparhawk looked out at the moat where a gang of workmen were driving long steel rods into the soft earth at the bottom of the ditch. ‘Isn’t that a little obvious?’ he asked.

‘We have to have mooring stakes for the barges, don’t we? The tunnels are all about five feet below the surface. Most of the workmen with the sledge-hammers don’t know what they’re really looking for, but I’ve got a fair number of knights down in the ditch with them. The ceilings of those tunnels will be very leaky when we start to fill the moat.’ Khalad looked out across the lawn. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Be careful with that barge!’ he bellowed in Tamul. ‘If you spring her seams, she’ll leak!’

The foreman of the Tamul work-crew laboriously pulling the broad-beamed barge across the lawn on rollers looked up. ‘It’s very heavy, honoured sir,’ he called back. ‘What have you got inside of it?’

‘Ballast, you idiot!’ Khalad called back. ‘There are going to be a lot of people on that deck tomorrow night. If the barge capsizes and the emperor falls in the moat, we’ll all be in trouble.’

Sparhawk looked inquiringly at his squire.

‘We’re putting the naphtha casks in the barges inside the construction sheds,’ Khalad explained. ‘We decided to do that more or less in private.’ He looked at his lord. ‘You don’t necessarily have to tell your wife I said this, Sparhawk,’ he said, ‘but there were a few gaps in her plan. The naphtha was a good idea – as far as it went, but we’ve added some pitch as well, just to make sure it catches on fire when we want it to. Naphtha casks are also very tight. They won’t do us much good if they just sink to the bottom of the moat when we break open the barges. I’m going to put a couple of Kring’s Peloi in the hold of each barge. They’ll take axes to the casks at the last minute.’

‘You think of everything, Khalad.’

‘Somebody has to be practical in this group.’

‘Now you sound like your father.’

‘There is one thing though, Sparhawk. Your party-goers are going to have to be very, very careful. There’ll be lanterns – and probably candles as well – on those barges. One little accident could start the fire quite a bit sooner than we’d planned, and – ah, actually, we’re a bit ahead of schedule, your Highness,’ he said in Tamul for the benefit of the half dozen labourers who were pulling a two-wheeled cart along the parapet. The cart was filled with lanterns which the labourers were hanging from the battlements. ‘No, no, no!’ Khalad chided them. ‘You can’t put two green ones side by side like that. I’ve told you a thousand times – white, green, red, blue. Do it the way I told you to do it. Be creative in your own time.’ He sighed exaggeratedly. ‘It’s so hard to get good help these days, your Highness,’ he said.

‘You’re overacting, Khalad,’ Sparhawk muttered.

‘I know, but I want to be sure they’re getting the point.’

Kring came along the parapet rubbing his hand over his scarred head. ‘I need a shave,’ he said absently, ‘and Mirtai’s too busy to attend to it.’

‘Is that a Peloi custom, Domi?’ Sparhawk asked. ‘Is it one of the duties of a Peloi woman to shave her man’s head?’

‘No, actually it’s Mirtai’s personal idea. It’s hard to see the back of your own head, and I used to miss a few places. Shortly after we were betrothed, she took my razor away from me and told me that from now on, she was going to do the shaving. She does a very nice job, really – when she isn’t too busy.’ He squared his shoulders. ‘They absolutely refused, Sparhawk,’ he reported. ‘I knew they would, but I put the matter before them the way you asked. They won’t be locked up inside your fort during the battle. If you stop and think about it, though, we’ll be much more useful ranging around the grounds on horseback anyway. A few score mounted Peloi will stir that mob around like a kettle-full of boiling soup. If you want confusion out there tomorrow night, we’ll give you lots of confusion. A man who’s worried about getting a sabre across the back of the head isn’t going to be able to concentrate on attacking a fort.’

‘Particularly when his weapon doesn’t work,’ Khalad added.

Sparhawk grunted. ‘Of course we’re assuming that the warehouse full of crossbows Caalador found was the only one,’ he added.

‘I’m afraid we won’t find that out until tomorrow night,’ Khalad conceded. ‘I disabled about six hundred of those things. If twelve hundred crossbowmen come into the palace grounds we’ll know that half of their weapons are going to work. We’ll have to take cover at that point. You there!’ he shouted suddenly, looking upward. ‘Drape that bunting! Don’t stretch it tight that way!’ He shook his fist at the workman leaning precariously out of a window high up in one of the towers.

Although he was obviously quite young, the scholar Bevier escorted into Ehlana’s presence was almost totally bald. He was very nervous, but his eyes had that burning glaze to them that announced him to be a fanatic. He prostrated himself before Ehlana’s thronelike chair and banged his forehead on the floor.

‘Don’t do that, man,’ Ulath rumbled at him. ‘It offends the queen. Besides, you’ll crack the floor tiles.’

The scholar scrambled to his feet, his eyes fearful.

‘This is Emuda,’ Bevier introduced him. ‘He’s the scholar I told you about – the one with the interesting theory about Scarpa of Arjuna.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Ehlana said in Tamul. ‘Welcome, Master Emuda. Sir Bevier has spoken highly of you.’ Actually, Bevier had not, but a queen is allowed to take certain liberties with the truth.

Emuda gave her a fawning sort of look. Sparhawk moved in quickly to cut off a lengthy, rambling preamble. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong about this, Master Emuda,’ he said, ‘but our understanding of your theory is that you think that Scarpa’s behind all these disturbances in Tamuli.’

‘That’s a slight over-simplification, Sir –?’ Emuda looked inquiringly at the tall Pandion Knight.

‘Sparhawk,’ Ulath supplied.

Emuda’s face went white, and he began to tremble violently.

‘I’m a simple sort of man, neighbour,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘Please don’t confuse me with complications. What sort of evidence do you have that lays everything at Scarpa’s door?’