Knaves

by Abbott, Alana Joli; Meadors, Melanie R. ;

  A stirring down there in the Immish camp. General moving and swirling around, flashes of sunlight on armor, distant noise. Like a ripple in deep water, someone throwing a stone into a pond.

  One of the siege engines went into action. A yelling followed by crash. Lots of people moving. The whole damn machine shaking after it went off. Don’t often see that, a siege engine losing. Fuck, is all I can say, really. Fucking fuck. A rock big enough we could see it, streaking through the air, watch it, watch it… Hit the city walls, and I swear all five of us closed our eyes and jumped and felt the earth shake.

  Big cloud of dust.

  Cheers.

  Big cloud of dust clearing.

  The wall was entirely unharmed.

  The rock was… a cloud of dust.

  Cheers from inside the city.

  Groans from the Immish camp.

  “City hasn’t fallen,” said Piyrce.

  WE MADE CAMP in the trees back down the other side of the ridge. Felt better not seeing all those Immish campfires that we’d have to get through to get in. The Immish didn’t seem entirely perturbed by the walls being impregnable. Dull regular crashing noises of rocks being thrown against the walls and pulverized, people shouting—swear we could hear the people of Telea jeering and shouting insults back. Late afternoon, now, and they’d built up to all five engines going. Crash smash snigger crash smash snigger crash. Pity the poor blokes who had to haul the pointless useless massive lumps of rock.

  “Maybe the Immish plan is to build up so much dust against the walls it forms a ramp?”

  “Or choke the Teleans to death?”

  “Mercy, mercy, I surrender, I’ve got too much dust in my hair to go on! My coat’s dirty! Such cruelty of war!”

  But the noise and the dust and the Teleans all looking at the engines pointing and laughing… chaos and confusion… and if we stay here, behind the Immish lines, a scouting party or a foraging party or two blokes looking for a private spot for a quicky—someone’ll be bound to turn up and fall over us with a sword drawn. So…

  “Get some dinner and a few hours rest, lads,” I told the squad. “Once it gets dark… we’ll go in. Get it over with.”

  And it’s that weird bit again, when you’re sitting eating a bit of stale bread and a hunk of dried meat, trying to get some sleep, knowing you’ll probably be dead by morning. Look at the meat you’re eating, think about how that’ll probably be you in a few hours’ time.

  Your face, there… I’m joking. It’s fine. Exciting. Like that wait while the desire of your heart debates whether to get their kit off, that’s all.

  Pass the pork scratchings there. Damn fine beer, this, don’t you think?

  Piyrce woke me with the twilight coming. Long summer evening, red fire on the western horizon, in the east the stars were showing and the sky was dark like silk. Warm still. Birds singing for the sunset. Swirling in to roost for the night, black against the sun.

  Strong smell of smoke. Greasy, acrid, nasty smoke.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Come and have a look.” Me and Piyrce scrambled to the top of ridge again, peered down at the Immish camp and the city. Thousand, thousand, thousand fires. The Immish were hurling barrels of burning oil at the walls. Red fire, red as the sunset. Thick black smoke. The walls stained black with soot. A barrel shot up like a shooting star. Everyone there, me, Piyrce, the Immish, the Teleans, all of us watching it and, gods, honestly, it was beautiful. Red like the sunset. Trailing sparks and fire, dripping fire as it went. Flying. And it hit the walls of Telea, those famous legendary walls glowing yellow in the twilight. And it didn’t break them down, no, because they were impervious to stone and bronze and iron and wood. But the oil broke over them. And the oil burned. And the magic wall began to burn.

  Another barrel went higher. Over the walls and gone.

  I swear, even from that distance, I heard someone scream as the oil hit them.

  “Fuck me,” said Alxine. He was crouching beside me, his eyes wide.

  “Fuck off back to the others, I didn’t tell you to follow me.” And I said to Piyrce, “Perfect. Chaos, bloodshed, murder, firelight to guide us. We’re going in.”

  We went over the ridge all together, crouching low. Organized chaos down there. Ten thousand men and horses, and the siege engines going, and a ram moving towards the gates. The walls of the city on fire. Dark, clouds coming over, and no moon tonight.

  You’d almost think we’d judged it exactly, getting there to go in on a moonless night during an assault. Wouldn’t you?

  Trumpets. Drum beating. Ten thousand pairs of feet on the march. The Immish were also going in.

  I WISH I could describe it. That moment, going down into a war. I’ve only done it once or twice, thank and curse the gods. The air smells of it; you can see the death in the air above the soldiers as they’re waiting, like heat haze. You can see it on their breath. Dark, and the light from their torches, and the light from the walls where they were burning, and the city was lit up too, blazing lights on the walls and in every tower, because they knew the Immish were coming, and they wanted to kill and die in the light. And the siege engines still going, throwing fire. Arcs of fire in the air. The Immish soldiers marched beneath them, with the fire dripping down on them; in the fire their armor looked red and black.

  And the tramp of their feet, and the crash of the war engines—I said waiting to go in feels like the wait while the desire of your heart gets their kit off, yeah? Well, going in, going in the midst of a battle—that’s like… gods, it’s like… I can’t put it in words. I wish I could tell you what it’s like. It’s like that moment when they hold out their arms to you, your first time… only… only… more. Like that… only… everything.

  One of the siege engines failed. Something snapped or bent wrong. A barrel of burning oil came down on a troop of Immish soldiers marching forward with ladders. Screams. Squeals. The Immish troops behind flowed round them, marched on, tramping on the flames.

  A ram up now. Battering at the main gates.

  What? No. No, we weren’t in there. Nowhere near it. We were round the back, of course. “Sounds like I was part of it?” Sorry, maybe it does. Too excited, thinking about it. Gods, I can see it still, that night. Biggest battle I’ve ever been in. But we were round the back of the lines, creeping, crawling in place like bloody lizards, angling our way round. Skie’s directions were that there was a postern gate, round to the east of the walls, sheltered by tower buttresses, and we’d try to get in there.

  Yes, I can see what you’re about to ask. Hang on. One step at a time, right?

  The Immish were nearly at the walls now. A ladder being maneuvered up. The siege engines loosed and trumpets sounded. The ram was pounding. We kept moving round eastwards—thank all the gods the Immish attack was focused on the main gate and the wall just to the west of it. Very, very few people looking anywhere near us. And there’s the tower, massive thing, sticking out of the city wall like a wart. You know those things trees get, when they have those big lumps on their trunks, itchy looking things? Galls? Really? Okay, I’ll take your word for it. So the tower looked kind of like that. You could see why the Immish weren’t trying anything right there. And why someone decided it would be the best place for us to go in.

  Right. Now or never. Mad dash across no-man’s land and pray and pray and fucking pray we make it.

  A blast of white light. Gold sparks, like someone kicking a bonfire. A scream. A thousand fucking screams. The trumpets and the singing stopped very sudden. White light again, and white heat, and my eyes hurt. Lying on the ground in the mud gasping for breath, the air ringing, that silence after a thunderclap that’s louder than the noise itself.

  And this screaming started. Shrieking. Like a man whose bones are being ripped out.

  “What the fuck was that?” said Alxine, when any of us could speak.

  “That was a mage,” said Mela.

  A mage.

  Yes, a mage.

 
M A G E. Mage.

  Gods, you had a sheltered life or what? Shut your mouth, you’ll get flies in your throat; or the wind’ll change and you’ll be stuck like that. Actually, okay, look, cards on the table and all, seeing as I like you—no, I haven’t seen that many of them myself. This might possibly have been the first time I’d seen one fight. Hopefully the last time, too. But I at least managed to keep my mouth from dropping open quite that much.

  Alxine had pissed himself, I’ll grant you. And Piyrce looked like he was going to puke.

  There was a smell in the air, like hot metal, and the air was thick with oily smoke.

  There’s bits of people, there in that smoke.

  Everyone and everything was very still. Like the Immish were sitting thinking, “Fuuuuck” and the Teleans were sitting thinking, “It worked. Whoa.” Then a trumpet sounded, and a voice shouted, and the siege engines loosed, and there was another flash of mage light from the walls, and more screams. And the assault was on again, Immish soldiers running and shouting and dying, and I could see a ladder almost at the burning bloody walls when it went up in flames.

  “Run!” I screamed at the lads. “Fucking run!”

  In the firelight and the magelight, the smoke and the darkness… gods, it was like there were so many of us, so many and so few of the Immish soldiers, of the defenders on the walls. Ghosts and spirits running everywhere, an Immishman came running towards us and past us screaming, all over blood, and then a whole troop of them, blood on their spears, their eyes rolling in their heads, we were up so close to them when they appeared out of the smoke and the dark they almost fell over us, but whatever they thought we were, if they even noticed us in their terror… they just ran past us and ran on. Like ghosts. Us and them.

  “Fucking run! We’re nearly there.”

  And we were. We were. There’s the tower, and the wall in its shadow, and there’s the postern gate. We were up against it, hands on the wooden gate and the stone wall. Rough. Dry. Real. Small. The tower was between us and the fighting. Peaceful, suddenly. Just strange distant noises, a glow and stink in the darkness. But the stones of the wall felt warm, from where the walls were burning. The walls trembled occasionally, when a stone from the siege engines struck them. Made the walls feel like they were alive.

  This small locked door.

  “So…”

  “So,” Piyrce said, more nervous than I’ve ever heard him: “We just… knock?”

  “We…”

  You’re not stupid. You can see where this is going, can’t you?

  Never make complicated plans. Complicated plans just go to shit.

  Not making complicated plans goes to shit too, but in a less disappointing way.

  “We…?”

  And then there was a squad of Immish soldiers on us with swords, yelling for us to identify ourselves.

  We…?

  Fuckers ran Piyrce through.

  See where this is going. Oh yeah.

  A sword in my face. Nicked me, I could feel it. Hit back at them, four against four; they were good, these boys, good tough soldiers, holding us, battering us; wet crash and Mela went down. Fuckers.

  I got mine down.

  Rolling about. His helmet rolled off. Nice hair. Make that boys and girls.

  Sword back in my face, jabbing. Lashed back, kicked at the fucker, hammered at him. Her. Whatever. Never found out, with this one. Actually, thinking about it, more likely to have been a bloke, when I kicked him in the nads and he screamed. Got me back, made my left shoulder scream.

  Jag went down.

  Me and Alxine left. Alxine was bloody bleeding. I was bloody bleeding. Bloody blood all over me. Three of them, looking well and truly pissed at us. Our backs really quite fucking literally up against a fucking wall.

  Alxine was a crap swordsman. Only still alive cause his bloke was already hurt.

  Two of them ran at me. A sword in my right shoulder. Balanced the wounds. A sword in my face. Alxine up against me. Getting in my bloody way. New boy, and green. Green and red and brown bloody striped, right now, was Alxine.

  Pauses for appreciative laugher and none comes. What do you mean, you don’t bloody get it? Green and red and—never mind. Never mind. This was a remarkably crap way to die, is all.

  Get it now?

  Still no? What do they teach young people nowadays?

  Anyway. I’m rambling again, aren’t I? Remind me where we were again?

  Oh yeah: dying.

  Dying. Fucking fucking useless fucking fuck.

  The postern gate smashed open and ten massive blokes in armor charged out. One of the Immish yelled “Kill!” and threw herself at them. One of the Immish yelled “Shit!” and legged it. One of the Immish yelled something unintelligible and died.

  Me and Alxine. Standing there. Green and red and brown stripes, the both of us. So, uh… this could go one of two ways.

  “There’s an army coming from Cen Andae to relieve you!” I screamed at them. “Can’t be more than a few days march. Honest. Honest!”

  Sword in my face again. Voice barked, “March.”

  The postern gate smashed shut.

  We’d made it in.

  THE CITY WAS in a remarkably good state.

  Okay, skeptic-face, hands on the table, no, I haven’t seen that many sieges. Who has? Mostly dead blokes. But I’ll bet you another beer I’ve seen more sieges than you have, and, with the caveat that I’m talking from fairly limited experience here, the city wasn’t really that badly knocked about. Considering. I’ve mentioned the magic walls: obviously, they were basically fine; most of the major buildings still seemed to be standing, everyone about still looked like they’d had something to eat in the last month. A crow flew down with a lump of someone in its beak, and no one rushed at it salivating.

  Immish weren’t going to break this place, with the caveat, etc. Not before the guys from Cen Andae got there.

  Oh, that made me feel good. It’s a nice feeling, when you know your job is really going to be of use, that you’re properly adding value.

  “Talk,” the guy who’d just saved us barked at me. I talked. Not much to say: Cen Andae, being super nice and caring, is sending some troops to relieve you, champing at the bit to kick the Immish in the nads, just hang on and hang on and they’ll come, I’m telling the truth I’m telling the truth, I’m about to pass out from blood loss, no, I’m lying, I just decided sneaking through enemy lines during an assault and counter-assault to lie to you would be a right laugh, gods, look, half my company’s been slaughtered, I really am about to pass out from—

  One of them gave me bit of dirty cloth to bandage my shoulders with. A drink of water from his waterskin. The filthy state we were in, we were dragged off up to the citadel to tell the high-up high up there everything. Confirm it, rather: the guy I was speaking to seemed to know something about it, nodded, smiled, “Thank the gods, praise the good people of Cen Andae” and that, proper pleased.

  Relieved, even.

  Looks relieved himself that you’ve got that one.

  You have got that one, right?

  General bustling around, shouting, people yelling heroic stuff like “redouble the defense of the main gate.” Eventually they remembered about me and Alxine standing there bloody and stinking, gave us a meal and a drink. The sweet, sweet taste of cheap, cheap beer. A loaf of stale bread, even a scrap of salt meat. Then we sat for a while, looking at the floor, thinking of Mela and Jag and Piyrce being dead.

  “Wonder where Skie is?” said Alxine. “If they got in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They can’t have got in,” said Alxine then. “The Teleans would already know the troops were coming, wouldn’t they, if Skie had got in?”

  “Yeah. They would.”

  “Assault’s ended. The siege engines aren’t going any more. The Teleans must have beaten them off.”

  “Yeah. Must have done.”

  Alxine finally shut up.

  “I’m going to get some sleep,”
I said. “You get some sleep, Alxine. We got things to do tomorrow. You need some rest.”

  WE HAD A sleep. I did, anyway. Woken up some time the next morning by the Immish redoubling the assault. All the siege engines, the ram, blokes with ladders, the whole shebang. The Teleans shooting back fire arrows, getting a machine on the walls going, the Telean mage blowing off. It began to pour with rain, too. Dark sky, high wind. Me and Alxine sat and cowered. A massive crash and the building we were in shook like a child, a load of dust came down over Alxine’s head.

  The building shook like all siege engines had loosed at once. I got up, went over to the door.

  “Come on, then.”

  “Come on?”

  “Yeah. Come on.”

  There was a bloke guarding the door, cause the Teleans weren’t stupid.

  I called him over.

  I killed him.

  Alxine looked at me. “Uh…?”

  “We need to go and open the postern gate,” I said Alxine.

  “Uh…?”

  “The gate. The one we came in through. We need to go and open it.” He gave me this look, really puzzled, like I might have to knife him for being dumb. Then he smiled as it clicked in him.

  “That makes more sense,” he said. “Yeah. A lot of sense.” And in that instant he stopped being new and green.

  I said, “Come on, then. They’re all waiting on us.”

  YOU PROBABLY KNOW the story from here, yeah? Or can guess it: you’re smart, I can tell. The army from Cen Andae was still two days’ march off when Telea fell to the Immish. The army from Cen Andae turned back round, marched home again with sad bowed heads. The Immish flattened Telea to rubble. Half its people died in the sack. The Immish hanged the king and the mage bloke from the gates of the citadel. Tore the famous magic walls down with their soldiers’ bare hands. The walls not being impregnable to flesh and skin. Built some new one in grey stone without the yellow paint-job. It’s part of Immish, now, Telea. Timber and furs and iron and precious gems come down the fast-flowing river Enias, travel straight on to the Immish capital of Alborn.