Page 11 of Something Human

“Uh, it’s a joke. Never mind.”

“What were you doing all this time? Did you find the goat?”

“No, there’s no sign of a goat. I did have a bit of a look around—then I fell asleep in the sun by that thrice-blessed fountain. I’ve brought you in some more water, by the way. Before that I went up to the top of the big temple to see how your people are going about besieging my people.”

“I do not think that will work,” said Rus, hoisting himself up onto the improvised pillows again so that he could drink from the cup of water Adares offered him. “We have never attacked a city with stone walls before, only the wooden strongholds of the Karhan tribes. And you are at the top of a crag, with cliffs all around.”

“Only on this side—on the other side, where the main gate to the city is, there’s a much gentler slope down to the coast. They’ll have discovered that by now. Anyway, even if your people can’t break down the gates or breach the walls, they can still starve Tios into surrender. They’ll have cut off the route to the port by this time. I only hope that we bought enough time, meeting your troops on this side of the city, to allow the women and children to get out to the ships. We knew an attack was coming, but we were not ready for it so soon. We had ships at anchor in the harbour, but the people were all still in Tios when we got word that the—your people—were in the woods just north of the city.”

Rus nodded. “I know that we were not planning to come south to the coast so soon, but there was a report that you were building walls from Tios down to the harbour, so that no one could surround you and keep you away from your boats.”

Adares laughed. “You could have waited, even still. It’s a big job, and the walls are months from completion.”

“We have heard that Phemians work fast. Our headman did not want to take chances.”

“Gunthanaruth—that’s your chieftain’s name, isn’t it?”

“You can pronounce it—I’m impressed. Part of your uninteresting job again, I guess.”

“Mm. He may do a creditable job of besieging Tios. He dealt with the Getti very efficiently a few months ago. And he’s got some impressive siege equipment. But our real weakness is the harbour. The first colonists built Tios to be defensible from land—within easy distance of a good harbour, but not a port city like Pheme. The harbour is easy to defend itself. It’s shaped sort of like this—” He gathered up the bedclothes to describe a tight horseshoe shape, the two ends nearly meeting.

“On either side are high cliffs—the narrows, here, are just wide enough for a ship to pass through. We only started to build walls to the harbour a few months ago—if they were done, they would not only protect us in case of a siege, but allow us to bring in reinforcements from Pheme by sea. Since they’re not, Gunthanaruth can surround Tios, and, by taking the cliffs, he can defend the harbour against Phemian ships, just as we would have defended it against enemies.”

“Tch. I see. Has he taken the cliffs?”

Adares nodded. “I could see blue banners flying from the watchtowers. I can only think of one route to get back into Tios, but it’s cut off—your people are swarming all over it.”

“What is it?” Rus asked curiously. “How would you get back?”

“Well … ”

When he hesitated, Rus quickly held up a hand. “You do not have to tell me,” he said seriously.

“What? No, I’ll tell you—I’m just thinking it through myself. Unless … I mean, if you don’t want to know … ”

The line of one of the tattoos around Rus’s wrist curled up just slightly into the base of his palm, where it trailed off in a couple of blue dots. He dropped his hand.

“Ah, no, I do want to know—I want to appreciate your brilliance.”

“Yeah, you’d better. So here it is. There’s a little fishing village, Ikthyra, on the other side of the woods just east of Tios—they supply most of the fresh fish for the city—anyway, it’s small enough that the—your people … Can I just say ‘the Luth’?”

“Please.”

“Well. The Luth probably don’t know about Ikthyra—would you say this is true?”

“I’d say most of us couldn’t pronounce the name even if we had heard of it.”

“Yeah?”

“Ik-thy-ra. But I told you, I am kahar, I am special.”

“Right. Well, the place will be half-deserted now, just a few fishermen left—all the women and children are inside Tios. But there would be small boats there—and in a small boat, I could sneak under the cliffs at the narrows by night. Once I got into the harbour … well, it would be tricky. I would have to stay out of sight until low tide, and then I’d have to move fast. The main drainage system from Tios lets out into the harbour, and it’s quite a big tunnel—big enough to row a small boat up, certainly. There’s a grate at the end, but it’s possible to open it. And of course it leads all the way back up to the city.” He paused, feeling a little ridiculous knowing so much about sewers. “I had a job with the department of public works when I first came to Tios,” he explained. “That’s how I know all this.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway, there’s a Luth encampment sitting between me and the road to Ikthyra.” It was where he had seen the smoke of the funeral pyres. “I don’t think I could get by.”

“So you can’t go back into your city to be besieged with all the others.”