“Such the optimist,” Argoth said.
“Let’s hope they have their eyes set on Blue Towers.”
Argoth shook his head. “I don’t think they’re here for the plunder. They’re too far north.”
“Are we sure they’re not allied with Mokad?” Shim asked.
“Loyal did not seem to be putting on a show when we spoke about it before. So if they’re part of this mob, Nilliam does not know it.”
“Are you sure?”
“No,” Argoth said.
Shim scraped his lip with his teeth a moment. “Regret’s eyes.”
Out on the field, another shout rose from the Mokaddian troops who had formed up by the river road. A few moments later, a team of horses crested the bank, pulling a flatbed wagon with a trestle on it. Over the next few minutes, five more teams pulled up five other wagons from the ships at the river. Two others had the same wooden trestles. The other three carried long beams. The six wagons split into three groups, a beam to each. Then teams of men began to work on them, assembling the pieces.
“Zu,” one of the men on the wall said. “What kind of war engines are those?”
“Stone giants,” Argoth said.
Stone giants were large stone-throwing siege weapons. They worked on the same principles of a staff sling. When assembled, the beam stood in the air on two tall triangular legs, connected by an axle, which ran straight through the beam. Attached to one end of the beam was a huge sling. At the opposite end of the beam hung a heavy box. When the stone giant wasn’t loaded, the counterweighted end of the beam with the box naturally pointed down between the two legs while the head of the beam, to which the sling was attached, rose into the sky. It looked like a giant stick creature with no arms or shoulders standing at attention.
Argoth said, “They’ll fill the box with stones or sand or lead. A number of ton’s worth. The stone giant’s crew will pull the head of the beam down so it’s almost touching the ground, the counterweighted rear end sticking up into the sky. Then the crew will place whatever they want to throw into the sling—a boulder, beehives, a diseased cow. To throw the contents of the sling, the crew simply releases the head. The counterweight, with all its tons of force, swings down. The head swings up, and the sling whips up and around, flinging the missile in a high arc at the target.”
“They’re going to try to bash down a wall?”
“I don’t know what they’re going to do with it,” Argoth said.
As the teams worked to assemble the weapons, more wagons came up from the river carrying other parts. Dozens of men worked on each team and in short order the three stone giants were assembled and stood at attention, the beams rising more than thirty feet into the air.
Still more wagons arrived, this time carrying stones. Then the three wagons with smaller throwing engines that had been used to feed the winds on the plain were pulled up and positioned as well. Six engines in all.
Argoth’s thirst was upon him, and he picked up his waterskin. While he was drinking, a terror of Mokad’s elite dreadmen walked forward of the lines, keeping well out of bowshot. They held a pole with the banner of the Glory of Mokad. Normally this would be the outline of a red eye on a banner of white cloth. But this was the death eye, a yellow eye like a sun with yellow flames on scarlet cloth. The death eye meant they would take no prisoners. They intended to slaughter all within the fort.
The dreadmen paraded the banner up to where the Skir Masters and Flax stood.
“Look at that rotted spy,” Shim said. “Filling them in on our preparations. After the Bone Faces, we hunt him down.”
“Yes, Lord,” Argoth said.
The Skir Masters ended their talks with Flax, and their horn blowers blew a loud cadence. Mokad’s troops cheered again, but they did not move.
“Lord,” one of the captains on Shim’s other side said, “should we have the men take cover?”
“If the whirlwinds come, yes. But we don’t want our men to go to ground if they don’t. Let’s see how they play this,” said Shim.
There were teams of men working each stone giant. They pulled down the heads of the giants, raising the counter weight boxes into the air. Then half a dozen men loaded a squarish gray stone into the sling of each of the stone giants. Probably good hard stone like granite. But the sides were not flat. Argoth knew this for he’d seen such stones before. They had been carved so each surface was concave.
In a siege without skir, the stones would be round because all of the power would have to come from the throwing machines, and so the missiles needed to create as little wind resistance as possible. But with skir it was just the opposite. They needed to be shapes that the wind could easily carry.
Argoth estimated those stones were two to three hundred pounds each. The walls of this fort were not made of solid rock. There were instead two thinner walls of stones a number of feet apart, one on the front and one at the back. In between those two walls was a gap that had been filled with rubble stone and a binder. It was a cheaper way to make a solid wall. But it also meant that as soon as the outer wall was broken, the rubble of the inner wall would be easier to break apart. And three hundred pounds of solid rock would make short work of it.
The team next to the first stone giant finished and stood awaiting a command.
Flax gave a signal.
“Did you see that?” Shim asked.
It would not be the position of a spy to command anything. “Maybe he’s more than a spy,” Argoth replied.
Two men next to the stone giant pulled a thick lever, releasing the beam. The counterweighted end swung down. The head swung up, pulling the sling with it, whipping the stone up and around. Then one end of the big sling slid off its catch on the beam, flinging the heavy stone in a smooth arc into the air. But it wasn’t any kind of trajectory that would send the stone to the fort.
“Ha!” a soldier cried. “It’s going to fall short.”
The stone approached the apex of its arc and looked like it would fall maybe a hundred paces in front of the stone giant.
Jeers erupted from Shim’s men on the walls.
But behind the stone giants the branches of the trees on the opposite bank of the river suddenly whipped back and forth. The face of the river flattened. Spray kicked up. Then the trees on the near side swayed with a heavy wind.
The stone began to fall. The wind blasted past the stone giants and out over the field. A moment later the wind met the stone, and the huge stone jerked forward.
“The skir wind’s got it,” said Argoth. “Now we’ll see their strategy.”
The stone picked up forward momentum and rushed toward the fortress as it fell.
The jeers on the walls faded to silence.
The front edge of the wind raced across the field, hissing as it came, shaking the scrub and kicking up a cloud of dust and debris. The stone didn’t fly in a straight line, but careened a bit to the side, dipped, and then rose. It hurtled at the fortress. At first, Argoth thought it might be headed at Shim, but its path bent for the gate.
The men on the parapets there dove away. A moment later the leading edge of the wind slammed into the fort, ripping off a few helmets and carrying them aloft. The wind whined over the edges of the stone and the hoodoos. Then the large dark stone shot past and slammed into the weathered gate with a monstrous boom and crack. Men cried out, and then the tail end of the wind rushed over the walls, full of roiling debris, and whistled up the cliff face at the back of the fort.
Bits of grass and leaves mixed with dust and flittered over the fort. The huge gate beam had held, but a large part of the thick gate itself had been smashed in.
Another one of the stone giants swung up and cast its stone into the sky. Again the trees on the far side of the river bank shook; the waters of the river flattened; the branches of the trees on the near side bent and swayed. And the skir sped this sto
ne across the field, the leading edge of the wind marking its passage.
The wind slammed into the fortress. A moment later the second stone shot past and crashed into the gate with another boom and crack.
The third stone giant swung up. Another stone. Another rush of wind.
“How many firelances do we have at the gate?” Shim asked.
“Two,” Argoth said.
“We’re going to need more seafire. That whole host is going to try to march right in.”
The stone was turning as it flew its weaving path, but then it suddenly veered to the right, well to the side of the gate.
“Lord!” the horn blower said.
The stone was speeding directly at Argoth and Shim.
Argoth said, “Let’s not give them one target, Lord.”
“Go,” said Shim.
Argoth ducked behind the crenellations and hurried down the wall so they wouldn’t be able to track his movement.
Shim stayed where he was, his hands on his hips, facing the Divines in defiance.
The loud hiss of the skir wind grew as it approached.
“Lord!” Argoth shouted.
Shim darted to the side just as the skir wind slammed into fortress and screamed over the edges of the parapets. A moment later the boulder itself smashed with a thunderclap into the crenellation where Shim had stood. The top of the stone wall there broke, the pieces of rock crashing to the ground in the courtyard below. The men there jumped to the side, and the stones tumbled into their trench.
The wind whistled over the fort, then howled up the cliff face.
Shim stood, dust and debris hanging in the air, and gestured an insult at the Divines of Mokad.
The first stone giant had been loaded while the other two were casting their missiles. It swung up again and slung another stone into the sky.
The stone and wind sped over the field as if targeting Shim again, but it veered and smashed the gate. The gate was made of thick timbers, but it was old and weathered, and the impact buckled one side further.
Another stone giant swung up. Another stone was caught in the skir wind. It too hammered into the gate. Three more stones were thrown. The next cracked the locking beam and twisted the right side of the gate off its hinges. The last two stones finished the other side. When they were done, the gate lay in pieces, chunks of the large stones littering the courtyard. But the stone giants weren’t finished.
The next dozen stones were sent to make breaches in the tops of the fort wall to ease an attack with ladders. The last stones were sent against the hoodoos. The shorter hoodoo was thicker, and the stones merely punched a few holes in the side where the stairway was. But the taller hoodoo was thinner, and after three blows in the same area, a huge section of the side cracked and fell to the courtyard below, killing a number of men, and ruining a number of trenches. It left a gaping hole in the side of the column. Another stone crashed into the column toward the top. The rock column wavered, then cracked with a deep rumble, and the top two-thirds of the column toppled like a massive tree, falling outwards toward the field.
The men below yelled and scattered.
The huge column of rock rotated slightly as it fell, then smashed across a section of the wall and out into the field with a thunder that shook the ground.
The column obliterated the part of the wall it fell on. But it also did damage along the wall, causing a twenty-foot section of the top half of the wall to break away and tumble into the ditch outside the fort, leaving a huge gap.
A shout rose from Mokad’s army.
25
To Ground
SUGAR STOOD IN the cover of the copse with Urban’s men. There hadn’t been a way through the lines. With the eyes of her soul she had watched as the three behemoth blue urgom took turns racing across the river to the fort and then back up in a great loop, pounding the fort with Mokad’s stones.
When the large stone-wight hoodoo smashed the wall, Soddam shook his head. “An hour of this, and there won’t be anything left.”
Deadly orange skir flew in the skies over the battle, darting away from the urgom. Then one of the orange skir swooped down at the fort, disappeared a moment behind the walls, and flew back up again, carrying a soul.
A few of the other orange skir saw it and, like gulls, gave chase, trying to steal the soul away from the first.
Out on the field by the Skir Masters, three Walkers marched up from the river in their spiked carapaces holding odd shaped spears.
Sugar remembered what had happened at Blue Towers. The Walkers had appeared, and then that horn had sounded in the world of souls. “I believe they’re about to start the harvest,” Sugar said.
Another orange skir dove down into the fort to grab the soul of another Shimsman. And she realized even if Shim won, the souls of the brave men who fell would still be lost.
“There has to be something we can do,” she said.
* * *
Argoth waited for more stones to pound the fort walls.
But Shim pointed. “It appears they are not going to pound the walls to rubble after all.”
Across the field Mokaddian crews began loading the smaller throwing engines to feed the winds.
Argoth said, “It’s time to send the men to ground.”
Shim signaled his men to take to the trenches. The soldiers scrambled, and in a few moments the army vanished below their sacks and into the base of the hoodoo towers and parts of the chambers at the back of the fort. But not all hid. Two dozen stormwatchers remained above ground. These were the soldiers who signaled to the others when the attacking army was upon them and it was time to rise. These men wore bands of armor over mail over a thick coat of twenty-four layers of linen. Great helms covered their heads. Underneath them they wore brass goggles with thick glass to protect their eyes. They wore scarves over their mouths so they could breathe. Their job was to lie upon the ground in a shallow trench or behind cover and watch. Seven of the two-man teams took positions in alcoves made for arrow slits along the parapets. Another team took position in the smaller hoodoo. The rest dropped into the old ditch that ran along the outside of the fort wall.
The stormwatchers were to signal when Mokad was poised to attack, for at that moment the wind storm would lessen, and Mokad would charge the open gate and walls. The problem was that the men in the deeper trenches might be buried with a few inches of dirt, which was more than enough to muffle most sounds. But even if the men in the trenches weren’t buried, the winds often did not dissipate completely when the army attacked. The sound of a horn still might or might not be heard.
And so the stormwatchers held one end of a length of knotted cord. When they saw the faces of the enemy, they would yank three times on their cords. Each cord ran to one of the commanders—Shim, Vance, or Hardy. Each of the commanders held cords of his own that stretched out to his terrormen in their trenches. The terrormen held cords that ran to the others with him in his own trench as well as his hammermen in other trenches. The hammermen held more cords leading to their fistmen. And so the call would go out like a great jangling spiderweb.
Shim and Argoth did not take to ground, but put on their brass goggles and scarves and took cover in an alcove. Wrapped tightly about one of Argoth’s hands was a cord leading to a pair of stormwatchers in the ditch outside the fort. Wrapped tightly about his other were the cords leading down to three terrormen in their trenches at the base of the wall.
On the field between Mokad and the fort, three winds began to whirl. The men manning Mokad’s stone giants cast batches of stones into them. As with the larger, wall-breaking stones, these were not smooth and round, but squarish or even carved with concave sides. The other teams cast up scraps of metal and pieces of sharpened wood.
They fed the winds a few more batches of material, and then the winds twisted across the field in jagged lines toward the fort, kic
king up billows of dust and grass as they came. They were wide winds, and by the time they reached the fort walls Argoth could barely see past them. He could not hear Mokad’s horn, but he was sure it had sounded for he saw the army begin to march forward. Then the dust of the wind broke over the fort with a howl, blotting out the blue sky, making it impossible to see more than a few feet in any direction.
He and Shim took cover, lying head to head along the corner made by the walkway and the wall. But no sooner had he gotten into position than a stone struck him violently in the side. He sucked in at the pain. He had armor, but armor couldn’t defeat such a blow. That stone had bruised a rib, if not cracked it. He pressed in closer to the wall and was pelted by a handful of rocks.
A shield smashed into the wall, then flew past. Another stone careened off his back. Something banged against his helmet and flew off. The wind howled. Then roared. The dirt and sand in it hissed along his armor.
Some skir winds were rumored to be so strong they could carry cattle aloft. And Argoth thought about the horses. Those that hadn’t been able to be given cover in the chambers at the back would surely take a beating. He supposed most of them would die.
Through the thick glass of the brass goggles he looked out at the fort, but couldn’t see for the dust and ferocious wind. A stone struck the side of his hand, crushing the last two knuckles. He cried out in pain and cursed himself—stormwatchers were trained to ball their hands in a fist and pull their arms in, so that knees, elbows, and fingers were protected. He pulled his hands in and tried to wedge himself deeper into the corner.
The wind raged, rising, then falling, then rising again. Stones thumped and cracked into the wall about him. He thought he heard cries, but couldn’t be sure. Another stone struck him in the shoulder. Something else hit him in the leg.
Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 Page 28