Gates of Stone

by Angus Macallan

  Katerina scanned the walls nervously, and now she saw movement. The number of turbaned heads had multiplied and thickened on the battlements. She could hear whistles being blown in the fort, reedy, faraway sounds, like the voices of children. The nearest Scouts were still a hundred paces away; some, she saw, were already pausing to unwrap the coiled ropes from around their waists.

  Not a single shot had yet been fired.

  But something was clearly wrong. The intelligence she had received from the Council of Venerables had stated that there was never more than a single company of Dokra garrisoned inside the Red Fort, a hundred men, and another fifty members of the Honorable Artillery Company to serve all of its eight guns. She had planned for no more than twenty-five, perhaps thirty musketeers at most opposing them on this unguarded southern side. But she could see many more than that now; scores of little round heads were popping up all along the parapet, more than a hundred men. A hundred and fifty, perhaps. Gods! Even two hundred. Muskets were being lifted, aimed over the stonework. The shrill whistles were still blowing. The little red-turbaned heads now were thick as berries on a bush.

  The right-hand cannon spoke. The muzzle belched flame and a small black ball came skipping across the grassy field and struck a running Scout full in the chest, knocking him flat, one detached blue arm spinning away. His mate knelt and fired futilely in return, his musket ball cracking against the red-blotched stonework. The element of surprise was long gone. Both sides could see each other clearly. The Scouts gave a huge cheer and charged, their captain waving them forward with loud, urgent cries and a brandished sword. They came on in a thin wave, a hundred running men, steel helmets winking in the sunshine, now seventy paces from the walls, now fifty. A wave of little blue men running full tilt toward the high red walls.

  The massed Dokra on the battlements fired, every second man discharging his musket in a puff of gray, their bullets scything into the attacking Scouts like a lethal, clattering rain, dropping a dozen men. Some Legionnaires fell to their knees, coughing blood, clutching at shattered limbs; others staggered onward or tried to return fire. The second cannon, on the left of the south wall, roared out and two crouching men, one behind the other, were caught by the same ball and ripped into bloody pieces.

  A goat, bleating madly, ripped its tether free and ran away to the west.

  The Dokra fired another volley, little blooms of smoke appearing all along the wall. A bullet struck the shouting Scout captain full in the face, blowing his head from his neck. A dozen other Scouts were knocked over. The green pasture was now littered with bodies and patches of blood. Met by superior numbers, superior firepower, the attack wavered. A few Scouts had stopped to aim and fire their muskets up at their foes on the walls; some were still unwinding the grappling-iron ropes from around their waists. Others, now right under the battlements, were swinging the grapples up against the stone, aiming to catch at the top and climb. Katerina could see the Dokra above them reloading. Slim rammers going up and plunging down into hot barrels. She could hear the shouts of their officers, too, and the whine of their whistles.

  The Dokra loosed another volley, and at that short range even the poorest shot was making a kill. The climbers were swept from the walls, and their dangling ropes dislodged by hands above. More than half the Scouts were down now, broken bodies scattered on the grass, and more falling with every passing moment. It was clear the attack was failing, had failed. The surviving men, no more than half of the company, were kneeling, firing up at the battlements, then reloading furiously, or just cowering under the lash of the Dokra fire. None were moving forward. Few were now even attempting to climb the battlements. Yet one brave soul did rush to the walls, a small, lean, helmetless Scout, and Katerina silently hailed him as a hero and promised him a vast reward. He whirled and swung his grapple up toward the summit of the stone. The hooks caught, the man tested it with his weight, put one boot on the stone wall—and a Dokra, leaning over from the parapet, shot him through the skull.

  “Major Chan!” she called. The smoke of the discharged muskets was drifting over the field. Katerina could smell its eggy, sulfurous stench, and clearly hear the horrible screams and moans of the Scout wounded. She was aware that all twelve of her Niho knights were around her, guarding her from a long musket or cannon shot with their black-armored bodies. “Major Chan—send in the Stormers. Immediately! Send them in now!”

  The Legionnaire officer saluted smartly. He began to shout orders and the five platoons of Stormers, each a crisp, neat blue block of humanity, began to move forward, a measured tread, each man’s pace exact and the same as his neighbor’s.

  The Scouts were still firing—and dying—at the very foot of the battlements. There were so few of them left unhurt, twoscore perhaps at most, that Katerina was amazed they did not run. But the Dokra, too, were taking casualties now. She saw gaps in the line of turbaned heads—and now another mercenary was blasted back from his position on the battlements by a kneeling sharpshooter in Celestial blue.

  The Stormers were now two hundred paces from the walls. They broke into a jog, still maintaining their perfect alignment. Five blocks of men sweeping toward the enemy walls. The sunlight reflecting on their mirror-bright helmets. They were magnificent, Katerina thought. Truly magnificent men.

  At a hundred and fifty paces, the right-hand cannon roared, canister this time, and the blast, hundreds of lead balls shooting out in a cone like an enormous shotgun, caught the inner edge of the center platoon, wiping away a dozen Stormers with one vast, bloody sweep. A one-armed man staggered onward, his stump showering blood. His other arm still brandishing his musket, shaking it at the enemy. Other men were sitting on the green grass in puddles of red. Katerina was aware that Ari, ever at her shoulder, was counting under his breath: “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . .”

  The Stormers were running at full pelt now. Just a hundred paces out from the walls. The left-side cannon spoke now, a huge orange tongue of flame and a roar that shook Katerina to her boots. An entire platoon of Stormers was destroyed in that single discharge, the men snatched away, hurled bloodily in all directions by the flying balls of the canister, leaving a patch of gore-smeared grass and a few feebly twitching bodies. She clutched at the handle of the Cossack saber at her waist. The Dokra were firing again, disciplined volleys, half the men on the walls firing, and then reloading while the others aimed and fired. The volleys shredded the neat formations of the Stormers, plucking men out of the blocks and hurling them away. Yet still the Stormers came on.

  Ari was still counting: “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty . . .”

  The right-hand cannon fired once more, the canister balls flaying the almost intact right-hand Stormer platoon, leaving no more than a handful of dazed, bloodied men still standing. All cohesion in the attack was gone, the Scouts and Stormers, the cream of the 42nd Legion, now no more than a crowd of deafened, bloodied men milling around at the base of the walls. Some were still firing at the walls but it was only a matter of time before they were all picked off from above.

  The attack had failed. She had failed. Once again she cursed her own arrogance in thinking she might do what the cleverest men said was impossible. Her intelligence had been wrong. Or she had been betrayed. That was surely it: betrayal. There were more than five times as many men facing her as she had planned for. And they had not been at all surprised by her assault. Indeed, she had the strongest feeling that they had been waiting for her. It didn’t matter now. It was over. Her dream, her grand, wonderful dream lay in shattered, bloody ruins before the walls of the Red Fort with the butchered and broken bodies of her courageous men.

  “Lady,” said Ari, “with your permission we Niho would like to try something.” Katerina looked at him blankly. “We believe we can breach the walls,” he said. Why not? thought Katerina, in despair. We are all dead now. Better to die in one last attempt than be captured and suffer what must inevitably follow. Then, to her
surprise, Captain Murakami stepped forward and bowed.

  “It has been an honor to serve you, Lady. But now I must beg you once again to release me from the burden of life. I go to join my ancestors, the Seirei.”

  “I release you from my service and thank you for it,” said Katerina.

  Ari, Murakami, Tesso and the other knights conferred briefly. And then Murakami bowed to her once more. He unsheathed his long katana and began trotting toward the walls. After he had gone fifty paces or so, the rest of the Niho, all ten of them save Ari, began to move slowly, almost leisurely, after him.

  “I will go with them,” said Katerina. She drew the Cossack saber from its sheath

  “Lady, it is not wise,” said Ari, putting a restraining hand on her arm.

  “Do not touch me,” Katerina snarled. “Obey me, knight. We will go with them.”

  * * *

  • • •

  When Captain Murakami was two hundred paces from the wall, he went from a trot into a full charge. He screamed his own name, and the name of his clan, lifted the katana high in the air and rushed straight toward the right-hand cannon. The sunlight flashed on his black-lacquered armor, and on the curved blade gripped double-handed above his head. It was a ludicrous sight, a lone man with a sword attacking the walls of a mighty fortress. And yet to Katerina’s eyes it was heart-wrenching and utterly heroic—even beautiful. Murakami was moving at an incredible rate now, lengthening his stride to come up to his full speed, running like a deer, and now he was only fifty yards from the battlements. He seemed impervious to the musket balls that cracked against his armor. Murakami flew onward. So nearly there, just a few yards to go. And, inevitably, at that moment, the right-hand cannon belched out its full load of flame and death. The two hundred lead balls inside the canister exploded out of its mouth, hissed through the air and ripped Murakami into a thousand bloody shreds, leaving no more than a mist of red where a brave man had been running.

  “Now run,” shouted Ari in the princess’s ear, and with the ten other Niho, they sprinted directly at the right-hand cannon. Katerina could see the men of the Honorable Artillery Company feverishly sponging out the barrel of the long cannon, a hiss of steam as the damp cloth went into the hot metal. She was aware, over the sound of her own panting breath as they flew over the grass, that Ari was counting again: “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen . . .”

  She could see the Dokra on the walls, and the little puffs of smoke as they fired at her and her tiny running band of black-clad knights. No volleys now, just individual aimed shots. The Niho were all around her, protecting her with their armored bodies as they ran. A ball pinged off the lacquered shoulder of the knight beside her and hissed past her face. The surviving Scouts and Stormers were still below the walls, sadly depleted, only a few score men standing. Some were occasionally firing up at the enemy, some gawping at the charging Niho. They were fifty paces away now. The Honorable Artillerymen were slotting in the canvas bag of black powder, followed by the shiny metal of the canister into the huge black muzzle of the cannon, and ramming the charge and load home. The Dokra were now concentrating all their fire on the running band of knights. Musket balls pinging and cracking against the lacquered armor.

  “Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five . . .”

  They would never make it, Katerina thought. But at least her death would be quick. The Artillerymen would put match to the touchhole, the gun would roar and it would all be over in an instant. She heard the meaty thud of a musket ball strike at close range. A knight to her left gave a high cry and fell away and she caught a glimpse of his bloodied face as she hurtled past him, breath sawing in her throat. The bullets were cracking all around her now. She felt their hot wind. Another knight was hit, directly in front of her. He fell and she hurdled his body and carried on. She looked up, twenty paces away, and she could see the Artilleryman atop the wall, a gingery man in a flat black cap, with the match glowing, a tiny coal at the end of his pole. The others of his crew were tipping the cannon, depressing the muzzle, aiming it directly at her, or so it seemed. It would roar out its fire, anytime now, and she would instantly die.

  But the first Niho knight was at the base of the wall. He put his back to it, bent his knees, laced his fingers together into a stirrup. The second knight stepped straight into the cup of his hands, the first knight heaved and the second was catapulted upward, hands reaching for the lip of the wall, and he was over and gone. Another followed him, and another. Katerina rushed forward, stepped into the stirrup. She felt Ari’s steadying hands on her buttocks, and then she was flying, up, up, the vista of the interior of the Red Fort opening before her. She landed catlike on the top of the wall. Saw a red-turbaned face with a huge black mustache, the man lunging at her with a bayonet. She slashed with the saber, knocking the musket aside, and chopped down with the backswing, cutting through the side of his turban, splitting his skull.

  There were Niho all around, sleek black figures with darting, shining steel. All the Artillerymen were down, one man’s ashen face lying next to the still-smoldering match. Ari was beside her now, and the Dokra were massing, a score of them charging along the parapet, snarling, some firing, others charging with bayonet. A lone Niho smashed into them, a solitary black knight charging home, katana whirling: limbs were lopped, bellies opened, the bayonets scraping noisily over his armor leaving deep white scratches in the black lacquer as he killed them all. That single knight went through a platoon of Dokra like a hot poker through a block of butter. There were bodies falling left and right, as his steel katana carved into flesh, blood spraying everywhere, stricken men tumbling off the parapet, screaming, to land with a thump on the earth floor twenty feet below.

  Ari was tugging her sleeve. “The sally port, Lady, we must open the port to let the Legionnaires in.”

  He led her down a set of stone stairs, hacking two Dokra out of his path with an elegant, almost-contemptuous ease. She found herself at the bottom of the steps. A red-jacketed man rushed at her, a sword arcing toward her face, but Ari’s blow severed his arm before he could connect. Her knight took on two men, experienced bayonet fighters, jabbing and staying out of range of his long, curved blade. Ari rolled under one lunge, and came up with his katana deep in the man’s belly. He was up in an instant and whirling, slicing the second man’s head clean from his shoulders in a hot spray of gore. Katerina saw a pale, shouting face in front of her, slashed instinctively with her saber, feeling the crunch of teeth under her blade all the way up her arm. The man fell away. She wrenched the saber free.

  “This way, Lady,” said Ari. A musket fired close by and she felt the tug of it in the cloth of the loose breeches she wore. She looked down but saw no blood. Ari was pointing at a small brown wooden door set into the wall at its center point. There were still hundreds of Dokra in the fort; they swarmed everywhere, surrounding the individual Niho knights in struggling knots. The air was thick with musket smoke; the smell of blood and ripped entrails strong as cheap perfume in her nostrils. She swiped at a passing Dokra and he ducked away from her blow. Ari flicked out and sank his blade into the waist of an Artilleryman, nearly severing him in half.

  They were by the wooden door.

  Four Dokra were charging at her, muskets and bayonets, but using all her strength of will, she turned her back on them, and leaving Ari to defend her while she focused on the little door, began to wrestle with the heavy, horizontal wooden bar that locked it. It was stuck. Immovable. She could not lift it from its bracket. She heard the screams from behind, the panting breaths; a spray of hot blood spattered her cheek. She could not lift the bar. She couldn’t do it. She would have to have help.

  She forced herself to be calm. She looked again and saw that the bar was held in place by a simple locking pin. Someone barged heavily against her back but she ignored it. Ari was there. She pulled the pin from the wood, lifted the bar easily, and was nearly knocked off her feet as the door swept open and a hug
e Stormer, face a mask of blood under his gleaming helmet, charged through with his long musket in his hands, bayonet fixed. She stepped smartly out of the way as another man came tumbling in, a slender Scout with shining sword in his fist—then the flood of men began.

  The remnants of the Scout and Storm Companies of the 42nd Legion had endured all the torments of Seven Hells. Their ranks had been decimated while they stood helplessly outside the walls. They had stood like sheep and been slaughtered from above for longer than anyone had the right to ask of them. They had endured; they had died. But once inside the walls their store of fury had no limits. The sally port that Katerina had opened admitted perhaps no more than eighty men, many of them wounded, some barely even able to walk, but they poured into the fort in a ravening pack, stabbing, slicing, blowing their enemies to eternity in a frenzy of revenge for the mauling they had suffered for so long.

  It was their reckless ferocity that won the day.

  The Dokra were pushed back, slashed, hacked and torn apart and, as Katerina crouched by the open port, utterly exhausted, the bloody saber cradled in her lap, she saw that the red turbans were slipping over the eastern wall and then, when the main gate was flung wide, they were streaming out of the Red Fort in their scores, heading back down to the city of Istana Kush.

  She called out for Ari, and found him right there, of course, standing next to her, still on guard, a bad cut on the visible portion of his handsome face, above the black mask, next to his eye, the armor of his left arm cracked and hanging loose in places, thick red blood seeping through.

  “Lady?”

  “I want a red rocket launched. Now. And get the Ostraka men and the baggage up to the fort. The north-wall cannon must be brought into action. Do it now.”