"When will that be?"
"When the fighting starts, soldier."
"Yes, sir."
"Tell everyone on the south battlement to thin their lines. If we mass there they may avoid it and look somewhere more vulnerable"
They need to think any point is as good as any other and approach the front door. Hopefully their camel outriders will see enough caltrops and ankle breakers in the north and east that they concentrate on the southern gate. The western wall rose above the Dilipur river making an assault there unlikely. I've taken a risk though. Betting the city on an assumption that the Shaa will need to be within the walls within a few days. If not, he can remove my obstacles, fill in the holes and hit us wherever he likes. Gods, I hope they are hungry.
Kellick was always struck with a moment or two of self-doubt before major engagements with the enemy. Particularly if he had a hand in formulating the strategy.
The Shaa isn’t stupid, the trap is too obvious. I've actually been reckless, focusing everything on the south side of the city. The eastern bull run is barely finished and even then, it's been prepared mainly to hold the horde back from venturing out too far while already within the walls. Not defend against a coordinated assault from outside. The north has nothing. Old men, helmeted women and children standing on boxes, keeping up the appearance of strength. A breach there would be the worst possible scenario.
Kellick would be lucky however, for while the Shaa was indeed far from stupid, he was under immense pressure to take the city quickly. His flock had grown to such a huge size that it could no longer sustain itself in the desert. If it didn't feed on the people of Ja Deist, his followers would feast on themselves.
"It looks like they are coming straight for us, sir"
"Aye."
A feint?
Then he saw what looked like disjointed white ladders rise up from the black mass in rows, undulating forward.
Hundreds of them.
They were heading straight for the southern gate and battlements. To either side he could now make out the forces racing to surround the city.
Just riders. Stopping anyone leaving. He's going to do it, straight for us. Excellent.
"They're bones."
"What are?" Kellick asked.
"The ladders."
They are bones.
"There sir, rams. And... oh shit, that's a tower." The soldier said, too fixated on the horde to realise he had spoken informally.
More and more siege machines broke the horizon, like ships riding a sea of people down the plain. Kellick noted that the towers and rams were also almost completely white.
Made of bones too. What happened to these people?
Another deafening shriek was released and the horde halted. The rumble of their approach suddenly Withd by a more unnerving silence.
“Ever been in anything like this before?” Bo asked Wit who stood beside him with Toke and Blunder on the parapet looking at the advancing army. Having spent several days locked in a bone cage at the heart of the Shaa’s camp they didn’t share the palpable shock of the other defenders around them. Any hope and relief they felt after being rescued by Azon was dashed when they realised where they had been taken. Only a few leagues north to Ja Deist. The very place they knew the Shaa was heading next.
Better to die here with friends. Bo had heard Toke say quietly to the other two when they thought he was sleeping last night.
“Aye lad. Many.”
“Nothing like this though Bo.” Toke added.
“How do you mean?”
“We’re used to fighting men, not these animals.” Blunder answered for them. “There’s a custom to sieges. Normally anyway.”
“A custom?”
“Aye. A chance to parley. Offer terms.”
“Why?”
“Because no one wants to fight if they can avoid it. If a town surrenders before the ram touches the gate clemency is usually offered.” Wit replied.
“And if they don’t surrender?”
“Every living thing within the walls are killed normally.”
“Or sold into slavery.”
“Aye.” Toke looked at Blunder. “Or that.”
“Seems harsh.” Bo said.
“It is harsh, but it makes the offer of early surrender more appealing. If this was a normal siege, few here that we are, Kellick would have probably lifted the white flag already. They can have the damned city and we would all be marching home weapon-less.”
“But Kellick’s not going to do that, right.”
“Not a chance. They…” He pointed out to the horde. “don’t want Ja Deist. They want us. Surrender now or be captured later. It’s all the same. I’d rather die tomorrow than today.”
“You’ve seen what they are like Bo.”
“Yes.”
“So we fight.”
Bo was suddenly reminded of the weight of the short sword Wit had given him that hung from his waist. A Raven sword. A few moons ago, like any boy from Carrid, he would have treasured the blade. Now the cold steel just felt like a burden. A joke. Standing next to these men, hiding his fear, he felt only inadequacy.
Worse than that. A liability. I should have stayed with Chiros in the barracks.
Drums broke the silence and the first columns snaked out from the horde. Thousands of marching boots joined the beat and the wail of bone instruments added to the maddening cacophony of war.
Three, four, no six. Ten. Shit.
"This is it Rill" the Ranger said watching.
Gods, that noise.
The Shaa’s forlorn hope approached in twenty long columns by Rill's count. Seven or eight men wide and hundreds deep. Sun bleached bone assault ladders waved in the sky above them.
Fucking savages.
In the middle of the columns down the highway two massive white rams rolled towards the gate joined by five towers being pulled by scores of desert oxen across the rocky ground between the lines of soldiers. In front of them ran more figures, hurrying to clear rocks and fill the holes Kellick had ordered to be dug up a few days earlier.
Ten or twenty thousand. And the horde behind them doesn't look one bit smaller.
A soldier approached the two rangers. "Kellick said to withdraw half the men. He doesn't want you to kill them too quickly."
"What? Too quickly? What kind of order is that?" Canno fired up.
"Just passing it along." The soldier said matter of factly.
When the messenger left he looked at Rill with disbelief. "What's he thinking?"
"Kellick must want the Shaa to think something. That we're weak here or something. I dunno."
"We are weak, they might not need a second chance."
"They don't have enough ladders. Those mages over there will handle the rams easily enough I’m sure."
"And the towers?"
"Kellick will have thought of something. He always…"
A massive explosion erupted from the field that shot bright sparks into the air, followed by a boom so loud Rill felt momentarily deafened. Black smoke billowed from the area rolling across the ground engulfing everything in its path. The relatively ordered columns either side of the blast had disintegrated, and men ran to either side away from chaos.
The other columns moved forward, shaken. Riders buzzed around them, whipping at the men to stay in line. The day’s light breeze thinned the smoke and Rill could see a vast crater in the earth.
Regaining their wits, soldiers on the walls started cheering and those on the stairs tried to move up to look at what could have made such a terrible noise.
"Get back there! You will have plenty of time to look later." Rill shouted at the men.
"Gods." Canno said mostly to himself.
"Aye." Rill agreed, unable to peel his eyes away from the devastation.
"Well that's one less tower."
"You idiot Locke. Too much! You always use too damned much!"
"Worked though didn't it. Wonderful. "
"What about the other o
ne?"
"Not sure about that."
"Where is it?"
"There, the warbands have passed it."
"The trigger wasn't sensitive enough! This is why we didn't have enough at the end."
"Or maybe they just missed it. You should be grateful we got one off."
"Waste of damned ore. You watch, my ones will kill more. And we can time it right, not just hope they roll over it. You can defuse those barrels on your own when this is done, I’m not going near them."
A messenger had climbed the stairs towards the pair and stood waiting for the two mages to stop bickering and acknowledge him. They did not.
"Ahem..." The messenger cleared his throat more loudly this time with growing impatience.
Nothing.
"Mage!"
"What?" Both said looking round slightly annoyed by the disturbance.
"Kellick wants something to take out the towers on the flanks. He's going to let the middle two come to the wall."
"Gas." Locke said.
"Wait. Does he want them stopped or wrecked?" Harlon asked the man.
"What's the difference?" The messenger asked with confusion.
"Well he wants everyone on the middle towers dead, but the structures intact.”
“How do you know?”
“He wants the Shaa to use them. Otherwise he would tell us to get rid of them, right?”
"Why?"
"I don’t know, I’m not the Captain am I. Makes it easier to kill them though doesn't it when they come from less places"
"I see, so?"
"So, the ones on the right, they need to be made inoperable?" Harlon continued.
"I would imagine, yes."
"Then he wants explosives. Locke, agree?"
"When you put it like that."
"The gas will be better in the streets anyway."
"That's true" Locke said walking to a wooden case and taking out four vials and another four jars filled with liquid. He took some leather straps with a small buckle attached and fixed the vial to the larger container before placing them carefully in a smaller case and handed the box to the messenger. "Tell them to throw these as far out from the wall as possible.” Seeing the fear on the mans face, holding the explosives and staring at the smoking crater in the distance, Locke added. “They aren't as strong as that one that just went up. But well... Yeah. Just tell the Captain to be careful. Throw it at the tower’s base."
"I will pass that on. One more thing, Captain wants you to make some more of… those things.” He pointed to the smoking crater. “The next waves are going to be bigger so he wants you two out there tonight laying the other half of the mines under cover of darkness."
"Don't trip, soldier!" Harlon shouted with amusement as the man walked off cautiously holding the case.
Locke turned on his brother knowingly. "Half of them Harlon. Half"
"About that…"
"You didn't tell Kellick they were all laid in a series together, did you?"
"He never specified separate blasts."
"Well it's too late now, we have to tell him this is all he gets for now though."
"I think he's going to know." Harlon said wincing at the plain beyond.
The warbands were close enough for Kellick to make out the individual fanatics in more detail. The remaining columns on the left had recovered, absorbing any survivors from the blast, although they still trailed behind the other bands approaching from the highway and to his right.
"Hold your fire men!" He shouted to the nervous archers who held arrows with oiled rags wrapped around their shaft and were ready to set them over the burning brazier.
He could just about see the two mages standing two arrow towers down the wall near the gate. They seemed to be waving their hands towards him frantically.
Idiots.
“Find out what those two are trying to say.”
“Yes, sir.” The boy said before scurrying off.
“Okay, light it up.”
The Rangers beside him drew back their bows, sending five flaming arrows into the air. A few seconds later another five followed. They arced over the front ranks, whose march had quickened to a wild run. The missiles struck the ground silently, most disappeared amongst the racing figures while a few could be seen smoking in the dry grass between the groups. Blue light flickered momentarily across the ground. Then fire shot out in a line on both sides racing across the sandy earth, cutting perpendicular through the oncoming fanatics. The thin burning streak stretched out across the killing field and was enough to break the warbands charge as men ran away from the strange flames.
Oh god.
The barrels buried beneath the earth started to explode. One after another beginning from the highway and moving outwards. The world shook as the tempo of eruptions quickened, blinding everyone temporarily with flashes of brilliant white light. Mud, earth and bodies were violently launched up into the air, seeming to hang static for a moment before falling back gracefully on the fleeing men below in a hail of rock, ash and blood. The last barrel on Kellicks far left detonated before another chilling silence took the field.
Every man on the wall, the mages included, looked down on the field in absolute shock. Kellick’s ears rang and he blinked his eyes repeatedly to dispel flash blindness. Screams called up from the thick smoke which was spreading across the plain again. He could see though that they were clearly in retreat.
All of them.
The tower in front of him and the two in the middle had been completely destroyed.
Just one still left intact on the far right. He observed, watching the men running away from the structure, over the obliterated earth and back out of his sight beyond the smoke. They had abandoned the two rams also, which being so far forward had escaped the Mage’s trap.
Damn them both, I said I wanted to drag this first assault out. But gods above what did I just witness.
"Get those two here."
It didn’t take long for Locke and Harlon to arrive, the cramped battlement parted for the brothers easily and soldiers patted them on the back as they passed. It was the catalyst in fact for the mood on the wall to pass from shock into exhilaration. Their enemy was in full retreat and they had survived for one more day.
"You two reckless bastards didn't listen to a word I said."
"Captain..." Harlon said
"Look at the field! Just look at it! What a mess, they can't get anything across now. We need them to strike here god dammit!"
"They still can." Locke assured him.
"They better! I assume that was it then?"
"’Fraid so sir. I linked it all up in a chain." Harlon said with a slight grimace.
"Yes, I noticed that. A fraction of that stuff would have broken them."
"We got ‘em though didn't we, sir."
"Got ‘em good." His brother answered for the scowling Captain.
You did that. Gods help us tomorrow though.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Drorea
Dokra lay in a room empty except for a Naru orderly, carefully cutting fresh bandages from a roll next to a sink built into the corner cabinet. A short distance away in the camp's network of infirmary tents, buzzed a severely overcrowded sanctum of suffering. Bandaged, half-dead legionaries and lancers moaned in agony as a handful of medics worked down a ruthlessly compiled list of 'priority cases'.
A third of the men laying in the beds of bay sixteen at least, the tent closest to Dokra, were being left to die. Their wounds too severe to spend any precious time on.
Burns. Much more painful than slashes.
Dokra considered to himself while looking at his own black, blistering calf muscles. The hum of increasingly familiar misery outside was occasionally punctuated with screams of agony from patients having particularly well-cooked limbs removed. Dokra desperately wanted to get away from the sound.
"You there, take me back to my quarters."
"Sir." The man said with panic. "The doctor..."
&nbs
p; "Never mind him, I want you to pick me up and carry me out. Come along now."
The orderly could not refuse a command from the field marshal and his anxiety was palpable. The doctor would not see it that way.
Dokra had never witnessed such havoc before. The drakes ripped apart his army with a fury that chilled him even now, as he remembered the dreadful high-pitched screech the beasts cried before blue flame shot from their mouths, consuming the men and horses running for their lives around him. It was a catastrophe.
And probably the end of my career.
Most of the survivors had eventually made it back to Cotsdam through the thick forest, yet most were unaccounted for. Dokra ordered scout parties out to bring back any wounded soldiers unable to walk the distance. He knew that the estimates were right though, he'd lost about half his men.
And the best half. The machines and horses. All gone.
The supply and war wagons were either a smoking pile of metal and timber or simply abandoned in the charred black mud. The Cavalry wing loss report was the most depressing news he had received so far. Most of the lancers had survived, but their horses had bolted. They bucked any rider not smart enough to have already dismounted, as the petrified horses were pursued down the forest's track, drakes lighting up the ground around them and diving into their midst to snap at necks and rumps. Eventually the animals were spread thinly enough to filter through the treeline and escape, leaving behind a wretched tableau of anguish. A crime of man and nature indeed.
Dokra had a minor head injury with serious burns on his left leg and shoulder where plated armour parted, leaving only leather protection for the skin. It was insufficient. The pain paled into insignificance for the field marshal however, when compared to his growing anger and embarrassment. It had occupied each and every thought from the moment the physicians had roused him a few bells ago with smelling salts. Since then, he gritted his teeth to supress any expression of discomfort as messengers relayed him one dreadful statistic after another.
The scale of the setback was appalling. Galtus wanted to make a show for the Republic, sending him across the Wirrow with far more resources than were reasonably needed for the overthrow of the Danor family.
The Ravens of Carrid Tower Page 25