The Hidden City

shrug.
    ‘Mirtai!’ he gasped. ‘That’s awful!’
    She gave him a baffled look. ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘That’s a terrible thing to do to a man!’
    ‘Throw him out of a window? I can think of much worse things to do to somebody.’
    ‘Is that what that word means?’
    ‘Of course. Stragen used to talk about it back in Matherion.’
    ‘Oh.’ Kalten flushed slightly.
    ‘What did you think it meant?’
    ‘Ah—never mind, Mirtai. just forget I said anything.’
    ‘You must have thought it meant something.’
    ‘Can we just drop it? I misunderstood, that’s all.’ He looked up at the others. ‘Let’s go on down,’ he suggested. ‘I don’t think there’ll be anybody else in our way.’
    Ehlana suddenly burst into tears. ‘I can’t!’ she wailed. ‘I can’t face Sparhawk like this!’ She put one hand on the wimple that covered her violated scalp.
    'Are you still worrying about that?’ Aphrael asked
    'I look so awful!'Aphrael rolled her eyes upward. ‘Let’s go into that room,’ she suggested. ‘I’ll fix it for you—if it’s so important.’
    ‘Could you?’ Ehlana asked eagerly.
    ‘Of course.’ The Child Goddess squinted at her. ‘Would you like to have me change the color?’ she asked. ‘Or maybe make it curly?’
    The Queen pursed her lips. ‘Why don’t we talk about that a little?’ she said.
    The Cynesgans who manned the outer wall of the Hidden City were not particularly good troops in the first place, and when the Trolls came leaping out of No-Time to scramble up the walls toward them, they broke and ran.
    ‘Did you tell the Trolls to open the gates for us?’ Vanion asked Ulath.
    ‘Yes, my Lord,’ the Genidian replied, ‘but it might be a little while before they remember. They’re hungry right now. They’ll eat breakfast first.’
    ‘We have to get inside, Ulath,’ Sephrenia said urgently. ‘We have to protect the slave-pens.’
    ‘Oh, Lord,’ he said. ‘I forgot about that. The Trolls won’t be able to distinguish slaves from Cynesgans.’
    ‘I’ll go have a look,’ Khalad volunteered. He swung down from his horse and ran forward to the massively timbered gates.
    After a couple of moments he came back. ‘It’s no particular problem, Lady Sephrenia,’ he reported. ‘Those gates would fall apart if you sneezed on them.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘The timbers are very old, my Lady, and they’re riddled with dry-rot. With your permission, Lord Vanion, I’ll take some men and rig up a battering-ram. We’ll knock down the gate so that we can get inside.’
    ‘Of course,’ Vanion replied.
    ‘Come along then, Berit,’ Khalad told his friend.
    ‘That young man always manages to make me feel inadequate,’ Vanion muttered as they watched the pair ride back to rejoin the knights massed some yards to the rear.
    ‘As I remember, his father had the same effect on you,’ Sephrenia said.
    Kring came galloping back around the wall. ‘Friend Bergsten’s preparing to assault the north gate,’ he reported.
    ‘Send word to him to be careful, friend Kring,’ Betuana advised. ‘The Trolls are already inside the city—and they’re hungry. It might be better if he delayed his attack just a little.’
    Kring nodded his agreement. ‘Working with Trolls changes the complexion of things, doesn’t it, Betuana-Queen? They’re very good allies in a fight, but you don’t want to let them get hungry.’
    About ten minutes later, Khalad and a few dozen knights dragged a large log into place before the gate, suspended it on ropes attached to several makeshift tripods, and began to pound on the rotting timbers. The gate shuddered out billows of powdery red dust and began to crumble and fall apart.
    ‘Let’s go.’ Vanion called tersely to his oddly assorted army and led the way into the city. At Sephrenia’s insistence, the knights went straight to the pens, freed the shackled slaves, and escorted them to safety outside the walls. Then Vanion’s force moved directly to the inner wall that protected the steep hill rising in the middle of Cyrga.
    ‘How long is that likely to last, Sir Ulath?’ Vanion said, gesturing toward a cluster of ravening Trolls.
    ‘It’s a little hard to say, Lord Vanion,’ Ulath replied. ‘I don’t think we’ll get much co-operation from them as long as there are still Cynesgans running up and down the streets here in the outer city, though.’
    ‘Maybe it’s just as well,’ Vanion decided. ‘I think we want to get to