The Sapphire Rose

Kurik, as a matter of fact, could. His years of experience, and the reminiscences of grizzled old veterans he had met from time to time provided him with a large number of very nasty ideas. There were objects he called caltrops: fairly simple, four-pronged steel things that could be made in such a way that no matter how far they were thrown, they would always land with one steel, sharp-pointed prong pointing upward. Rendors did not wear boots, but only soft leather sandals. A generous smearing of poison on the pointed prongs made the caltrops lethal as opposed to merely inconvenient. Ten-foot long beams with sharpened stakes attached to them to protrude like the spines of a hedgehog and once again doctored with poison provided fairly insurmountable barriers when rolled down long beams to lie in profusion out in front of the walls. Long log pendulums swinging from the battlements parallel to the walls would sweep scaling ladders away like cobwebs. ‘None of these will actually hold off really serious attacks, Sparhawk,’ Kurik said, ‘but they’ll slow people down to the point where crossbowmen and regular archers can pick them off. Not very many attackers will reach the walls.’

‘That’s sort of what we had in mind,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Let’s commandeer the citizenry and put them to work on these ideas. All that the people of Chyrellos are doing right now is sitting around eating. Let’s give them a chance to earn their keep.’

The construction of Kurik’s obstacles took several days, and there were several more Rendorish attacks in the interim. Then Preceptor Abriel’s catapults scattered the caltrops in profusion in front of the walls, and the hedgehogs rolled down long beams to lie in tangles and clusters some twenty yards or so out from the walls. After that, very few Rendors reached the walls, and the ones who did were not encumbered by scaling ladders. They would normally mill around shouting slogans and hacking at the walls with their swords until the bowmen on top of the walls had the leisure to kill them. After a few of those abortive attacks, Martel pulled back for a day or so to reconsider his strategy. It was still summer, however, and the hordes of dead Rendors lying outside the walls began to bloat in the sun. The smell of rotting flesh made the inner city distinctly unpleasant.

One evening, Sparhawk and his companions took advantage of the lull to return to the chapterhouse for much-needed baths and a hot meal. Before they did anything else, however, they stopped by to visit Sir Ulath. The big Genidian Knight lay in his bed. His eyes were still unfocused, and he had a confused look on his face. ‘I’m getting tired of just lying around, brothers,’ he said in a slurred voice, ‘and it’s hot in here. Why don’t we go out and hunt down a Troll? Slogging through the snow should cool off our blood a little.’

‘He thinks he’s in the Genidian Mother-house at Heid,’ Sephrenia told the knights quietly. ‘He keeps wanting to go Troll-hunting. He thinks I’m a serving wench, and he’s been making all sorts of improper suggestions to me.’

Bevier gasped.

‘And then sometimes he cries,’ she added.

‘Ulath?’ Tynian said in some amazement.

‘It may be a subterfuge, though. The first time he did it, I tried to comfort him, and it turned into a sort of wrestling match. He’s very strong, considering his condition.’

‘Will he be all right?’ Kalten asked. ‘I mean, will he regain his senses?’

‘It’s very hard to say, Kalten. That blow bruised his brain, I think, and you never know how something like that’s going to turn out. I think you’d better leave, dear ones. Don’t excite him.’

Ulath began to make a long, rambling speech in the language of the Trolls, and Sparhawk was surprised to discover that he still understood the language. The spell Aphrael had cast in Ghwerig’s cave seemed to still have some of its potency left.

After he had bathed and shaved, Sparhawk put on a monk’s robe and joined the others in the nearly-deserted refectory where their meal was laid on a long table.

‘What’s Martel going to do next?’ Preceptor Komier was asking Abriel.

‘He’ll probably fall back on fairly standard siege tactics,’ Abriel replied. ‘Most likely he’ll settle down and let his siege engines pound us for a while. Those fanatics were just about his only chance for a quick victory. This may drag out for quite some time.’

They all sat quietly, listening to the monotonous crash of large rocks falling into the city around them.

Then Talen burst into the room. His face was smudged and his clothes were dirty. ‘I just saw Martel, My Lords!’ he said excitedly.

‘We’ve all seen him, Talen,’ Kalten said, sprawling deeper into his chair. ‘He rides up outside the walls now and then to have a look around.’

‘He wasn’t outside the walls, Kalten,’ Talen said. ‘He was in the cellar under the Basilica.’

‘What are you saying, boy?’ Dolmant demanded.

Talen drew in a deep breath. ‘I – um – well, I wasn’t entirely honest with you gentleman when I told you how I was getting the thieves of Chyrellos out of the inner city,’ he confessed. He held up one hand. ‘I did arrange for a meeting between the thieves and those church soldiers on the wall with their rope. That part was completely true. About the only thing I didn’t tell you was that I found another way as well. I just didn’t want to bore you with a lot of extra details. Anyway, not long after we got here, I happened to be down in the lowest cellar under the Basilica, and I found a passageway. I don’t know what it was used for originally, but it leads off to the north. It’s perfectly round, and the stones of the walls and floor are very smooth. I followed it, and it took me out into the city.’

‘Does it show any signs of being used as a passageway at all?’ Patriarch Emban asked.

‘Not when I went through it the first time, no, Your Grace. The cobwebs were as thick as ropes.’

‘Oh, that thing,’ Sir Nashan said. ‘I’ve heard about it, but I never got around to investigating it. The old torture-chambers are down in that cellar. It’s the sort of place most people want to avoid.’

‘The passageway, Nashan,’ Vanion said to him. ‘What’s it for?’

‘It’s an old aqueduct, My Lord. It was part of the original construction of the Basilica. It runs north to the River Kydu to carry water to the inner city. Everybody tells me that it collapsed centuries ago.’

‘Not all of it, Sir Knight,’ Talen told him. ‘It runs far enough out into the main city to be useful. To make it short, I was looking around and I found this – what was it you called that passage?’