Kushiel's Scion - Jacqueline Carey [299]
Mounting the Bastard, I departed.
My sense of strangeness stayed with me. It had settled over my shoulders like a cloak, and I was enfolded in it. Eamonn noted it when we rode on patrol together that night. I was unwontedly quiet, wrapped in my own sensibilities.
"You're in a fey mood," he said.
"Thinking about life," I said. "And death."
Eamonn nodded. "Good to do."
The nights were quiet. Inside Lucca's wall, we rode in uneventful circuits. Outside the wall, Valpetra's small company of cavalry did the same. They rode in shifts, day and night; circling the city to ensure that no one attempted an escape, riding the length of the canal to ensure that we didn't endeavor to sabotage it. Our sentries kept watch to ensure Valpetra didn't launch a surprise offensive and a lookout for any lapse in his men's vigilance. Gallus Tadius had a company of saboteurs at the ready, armed with pickaxes and prying bars. We were poised to carry word at the first opportunity. If the saboteurs could demolish a section of the canal, the river would be diverted to flood the fields outside the city.
But there was no lapse, and at the river, the dam took shape.
I went to see it the day after I visited Helena.
There was a massive pile of rubble where once the acqueduct had flowed beneath the wall. The masons had done their best to construct a solid bulwark, but they were hampered by a lack of building materials. They'd salvaged bricks from buildings in ill repair, cobbling together a graceless structure held together by mortar that refused to set properly in the rain. On top of that, they'd simply heaped as much dirt and debris as they could haul. Whether or not it would hold, and for how long, was anyone's guess.
The sentry on duty, a good-natured fellow named Pollio, let me come atop the wall. Gallus Tadius didn't discourage us from getting a good hard look at our enemy's labors. He reckoned we were better off knowing what we were up against. Some of the men preferred not to know. I wasn't one of them.
It was a dismal view. A steady fall of rain soaked the fire-blackened fields. Beyond lay the river. It no longer cut a path like a silvery ribbon across the plain. Valpetra's men had done exactly what Gallus Tadius had predicted. They'd built a pair of dams flanking the canal and filled in the trench, returning the river to its proper course. The dams were as ugly as our bulwark; uglier, I daresay, built of packed earth and felled trees. Neither one was likely to hold for long.
But they were holding now.
Above the upper dam, the river was rising. It was rain-swollen and angry, forcing paths around the edges of the dam. I could see Valpetra's men scurrying atop the dam's surface, building it higher, reinforcing the sides. Others worked furiously on the lower dam. It didn't need to hold long, not long at all. Only long enough to shunt that first, furious surge of water into Lucca's waiting canal.
"It's coming," Pollio said. "Any day now."
Beyond the river was a forest of tents, sagging in the rain. I thought about Valpetra's men; Silvanus' men. They must be soaked and weary, chilled to the bone. And hungry, too. As miserable as the endless days of drilling and nights of patrol were, at least I was able to retire to the villa where I had a ration of food, a proper roof over my head, and a bed laden with warm, dry blankets. It seemed bizarre to me that unless fate intervened, we'd all be doing our best to kill one another in a fairly short amount of time. After all, we were strangers to each other. I asked Pollio if he found it odd.
He eyed me as though