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The backs of the crowd ahead appeared to be a solid wall; but we could worm our way through. I
frowned. I did not relish the idea of Barty being chopped to pieces, and I knew he would unfailingly be
chopped if those master craftsmen at murder caught up with him. I could not risk his life.
 Up, Barty, I said, and took his arm and fairly hurled him up onto the hay of the rearmost wagon.
 He started to protest at once and took a mouthful of hay, and spluttered and then I was up on the high
cart with him and urging him along. Reluctantly, he allowed me to help him over the somnolent form of the
driver, with a couple of steps along the broad backs of the krahniks, to reach the next cart along. So,
prancing like a couple of high-wire artists, we darted along the line of hay-filled wagons.
The massed crowds below showed little interest in our antics; a few people looked up, and laughed, and
some cursed us; but most of them were content merely to push on in the wake of whatever was holding
up progress.
The rain stopped and the twin suns shone with a growing warmth. The clouds fanned away, dissipating,
letting that glorious blue sky of Kregen extend refulgently above.
We hopped along from wain to wain, leaping the drivers and the krahniks. The animals were hardly
aware of the footsteps on their backs before we had leaped off and so on.
The assassins followed us.
Ahead the sense of a mass moving ponderously along the Lane turned out to be a large body of soldiery,
all marching with a swing. The glint of their weapons showed they were ready for an emergency, which
surprised me, although it should not have, seeing the troubles through which Vallia had just come  and
was still going through, by Vox. Everybody followed the troops, either unable or unwilling to push past.
A number of loaded and covered carts were visible within the ranks of the formed body, and there were
palanquins there, too, with brightly colored awnings against the rain or the suns.
Barty missed his footing and I had to haul him up off the head of a sleepy driver, whose brown hand
reached for his bolstered whip, and whose hoarse voice blasted out, outraged, puzzled, alarmed at this
visitation from heaven. I shouted.
 On with you, Barty. The rasts gain on us.
Ahead along the line of hay wains the purple shadow of an aqueduct cast a bar of blackness. That could
cause us problems. We leaped the next two carts and Barty again slipped. He turned on me, then,
thoroughly put out by my inexplicable insistence on running away. He held onto the high rail of a hay wain
and spoke furiously.
 In my island they used to speak with hushed breath of the Strom of Valka  Strom Drak na Valka.
But I have heard stories, rumors, that the great reputation is all a sham, a pretense, something to color the
marriage with the Princess Majestrix. By Vox! I do not believe it  but your conduct strains my belief,
prince, strains it damnably!
The hay wains were lumbering forward again, slowly, rolling, and the purple shadows of the aqueduct
fell about us.
 Believe what you will, Strom Barty. But you will go on to the next wagon and then jump down. You
will mingle in the crowds. You will do this as you love my daughter Dayra.
 And? And what will you do?
 I will go up. The aqueduct s brick walls presented many handholds.  They will follow me. That is
certain. I will meet you 
  I shall go up, also!
I lowered my eyebrows at him. He put a hand to his mouth.
 You go on under the aqueduct and jump down, young Barty. Dernun?
Yes, cracking out  dernun? like that at him was not particularly polite. Dernun carries the connotation of
punishment if you do not understand, meaning savvy,capish  but he took the intensity of my manner in
good part, only going a little more red. He turned and jumped for the next cart without a word and
vanished in those concealing purple shadows.
The bricks were old and here and there irregular patches of new brickwork had been inserted. The
emperor liked to keep his aqueducts efficient. Even so, sprays of water spat in fine arcs out across the
heads of passersby. I climbed up to the first row of brick arches and clung on and looked back. The
assassins were almost up with the aqueduct, leaping like fleas over the backs of the hay wains. I waved
my arm at them and then made a most insulting gesture.
The slant of the brickwork ran the water channel out over the Lane at an angle. I climbed through the
lower tier of arches into a dark cavernous space, lit by the semi-circles of brilliance in serried rows,
feeling the looseness of old mortar and brick chipping below, the glimmer of random puddles showing up
like unwinking eyes. Water splashed down from the leaded channel above my head. The stikitches
clambered up after me.
The plan was to run diagonally along the first tier of arches all the way across the Lane and so free
myself of the encumbrance of Barty. I had ideas on the mores and honor of the stikitches, and if Laygon
the Strigicaw was among those pursuing me  as he must almost inevitably be  then I could finish this
thing cleanly.
That time-consuming altercation with Barty had afforded the pursuers the chance to catch up. They ran
fleetly across the strewn ground at me, spraying water from puddles, yelling, incensed, confident they had
me now and uncaring of what noise they made in this arched space, knowing it would be lost in the
greater noise from the procession which passed by below.
 Kitchew! they bellowed, and closed in.
They were good. Well, of course, to be employed as an assassin on Kregen you have to be good. Quite
apart from the fact that if you are not good you won t last, you will also starve.
The shadowy effect of the brick buttresses and the shafts of brilliant light through the arched openings [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]