‘See that Bly and Torix are ready,’ he ordered, ‘although their wait may be long. There will come an opportunity, but we must be patient.’ He felt little confidence when he said it.
‘We could do with a diversion,’ offered Stern.
Hayden nodded his agreement. ‘I have several ideas in mind, but first we must find out what they are planning.’ He did not share with them his fear that the three powder wagons might themselves be a diversion. Perhaps the barrels of powder had already been unloaded and distributed within the army. In which case the wagons they were watching and targeting were a distraction – and a trap.
It was a long, frustrating day. The enemy made no move. Hayden’s army stayed in a state of anxious readiness. His scouts reported the enemy troops were breaking up the rafts and boats, laboriously carried from the Narrows, to build ladders. Hayden greeted that as excellent news. If they planned to use siege-ladders that meant they would not use cannon, at least not yet.
It was not long before dusk when Shivers returned from scouting with word that the enemy army was, at long last, preparing to move. The manoeuvre was a familiar one to Hayden. The army would creep forward under cover of darkness and at dawn the defenders on the walls would see forty thousand enemy soldiers spread out before them. It would startle briefly, but that was all. It was a dramatic gesture and Hayden wondered anew whose mind was behind it.
The two volunteers, Bly and Torix, petitioned the general to let them make a bid for the powder. Hayden thought long and hard. He would give them a better chance with a swift, simultaneous lightning attack on the rear of the enemy. He could send his fifty fleetest men, armed with knives. The enemy had no cavalry to speak of; they had all been sent south. How many infantrymen would the enemy generals waste chasing down fifty soldiers when the City walls were within sight? By midnight he had decided. The black powder was crucial to the enemy’s plans. If he could destroy it all it was worth the lives of every one of his soldiers, if it came to that. He called his three lieutenants and explained his thinking. They nodded gravely. They knew it was a suicide mission, but none dissented.
‘Where do we attack?’ asked Stern. ‘Our diversionary force.’
‘The guards in charge of the cannon,’ Hayden told them. ‘The cannon cannot be harmed or, realistically, stolen. They are too heavy. And they are useless without the black powder. So they will leave their least able warriors to guard them – the fat and the slow and the stupid.’
‘We cannot be certain of that, general,’ Brel put in, looking worried.
‘No, but we need a plausible target for our attack. We don’t want it to look like a diversion. An attack on the cannon would indeed be foolish, but they don’t know who we are, remember. We could indeed be fools.’
And he wondered privately if they were.
Stern was leading the diversionary attack. He had persuaded the general there was no other choice. The City soldiers would follow him and respect his orders. He could say that of no other warrior among them.
Benet had to stay behind. To Stern and the others the reason was obvious, but not to Benet.
‘You cannot see,’ Stern told his brother for the hundredth time. And at last, when he was sick of arguing, ‘You’ll condemn us all,’ he said brutally. ‘You’ll be a liability. We can’t look after you.’
‘I don’t need looking after,’ Benet responded sulkily. ‘I backed you up in that river, didn’t I? I killed that fat oaf.’
‘This is different. We need to be able to see well today.’
‘I can see.’ Benet looked around, ready to point out, yet again, what he could see. He pointed across the plain. ‘I can see that bird, the one with the missing eyelash.’
Stern smiled dutifully, though the joke had long since lost any savour. He put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
‘We’ll both get through this,’ he said. ‘We’ll both go home after it’s over. Don’t worry, you’ll have your part to play. I’ll see to it. But not today.’
‘I don’t want to stay back with the women,’ Benet argued peevishly, but Stern saw that in his heart he’d admitted defeat.
‘It’s not just the women. Most of us are staying behind,’ he explained. ‘It’s only the fastest that are going. And the bowmen.’ Benet knew all this. He’d been told it over and over.
‘Pigging bowmen,’ he grumbled, as Stern had known he would. He was dismayed when his brother suddenly threw his arms round him. His whiskers tickled Stern’s ear as he whispered, ‘Don’t leave me, brother. You’re right, I can’t see. I’m almost blind.’ His voice was rough with emotion.
Stern, filled with pity, assured him, ‘Just this once. We’ll stick together after this. You’ll be all right, I promise.’ Although it was a promise they both knew he could not give.
Now, as the first fingers of dawn reached across the plain, Stern waited, crouched in the long grass, which sighed in the stiff northerly breeze. He was dressed in light armour, just leather breastplate, kilt and cap, and he bore only two daggers, no sword. They would need to be nimble. He thought of the two infiltrators, Torix and Pieter Bly, now creeping towards the enemy flanks, and he brought his hand to his heart in invocation, praying that the gods of ice and fire would allow these heroes into the Gardens of Stone if it came to that. He had no idea what gods Bly or the other men of Petrus worshipped, but a hero was a hero in any country. He looked at the Petrassi captain, Brel, who knelt at his side. Brel gazed back, his brown eyes gleaming. Stern could see he wanted to make this a race – who could get to the enemy first. Brel acted as if he was in competition with Stern, though all the reward that awaited them, probably, was torment and death.
Stern’s mind drifted to the timepiece Hayden had shown him days before. That would be useful now, his practical side thought, to coordinate our movements, though his superstitious side still shied away from its magic.
Again Brel glanced at him impatiently, silently urging him to give the order. Stern chose to wait a little – fifty more heartbeats, he thought, to give the two men time.
But the decision was made for him. He heard orders shouted in a foreign tongue, then a loud drumming and the thunder of thousands of boots running as the enemy army surged forward, banging their swords on their shields, chanting their chant of ‘Death! Death! Death!’ Stern arose silently from the whispering grass, signalled to his men and started running as fast and as quietly as possible towards the enemy rear. At first all he could see in front of him was shoulder-high grass, then an enemy flag, waving blackly in the breeze, then the shapes of wagons. Beyond he could make out, for the first time, the north wall of the City. Stern felt his heart lift, but he turned his eyes to his target.
The guards on the cannon were not the tattooed savages they had seen so far. They were well armoured but slow. Either Hayden was right or they were too busy watching the advance. The City men hit them hard. Stern slammed his blade in the neck of a man standing gawping in the other direction and dragged it out as he fell. Two others turned sluggishly. Stern slashed the throat of one and Brel drove his knife into the other’s eye.
There were no more than twenty guards on the cannon and Stern’s men overcame them in a matter of moments. But the alarm, a deep, resonating horn blast, sounded out and they knew then they were done for. Stern dived among the wagons, heart pounding, looking frantically for something to rob them of, something to sabotage – something that would make a difference. Surrounded by the clash of weapons on shields and armour, the grunt and cry of fighting men, he found the cannon. He stared at them helplessly, realizing he knew nothing about them. He tried lifting the end of one. Perhaps three or four men could steal it, if they had all the time in the world and no one was trying to kill them. Was there some way he could damage it? He could see none. They were just metal pipes, open at one end. Stern forgot them and climbed into the next wagon. Here he found the balls of iron and stone. Each was heavy but he could pick it up, and then what?
He heard the crunch of a boot and
a shadow flickered on the edge of his sight. He ducked as a sword splintered the wood beside his head. He turned and smashed the cannon ball in the guard’s face. Another man rose and he elbowed him in the jaw then crashed the cannon ball down on his helm. The man went down. A swordsman leaped up on to the cart, but Stern jumped down the other side and rolled under it then squirmed under the next one. When he came up again he was alone and he leaped on another wagon to see what was going on. All around him his comrades were outnumbered by a company of infantry, but the enemy were hampered by their armour and the closely marshalled wagons which snagged their swords. His men relied on speed and agility and sharp knives. Stern looked south towards the City.
He paused, his heart thumping loud in his ears, as he saw the grey walls rising out of the churning sea of armed men. The clamour around him seemed to fade and for a long heartbeat he could feel the familiar stones of the City under his feet, taste its air on his tongue, hear the din of the crowds, smell the stink of the streets – the shit and corruption and death, but also the bread baking and the good ale and the perfume of women. In that moment he knew he would never return. He turned his back.
Their job of distraction was done, he decided. Those enemy eyes not on the wall would be turned to Stern and his comrades and not, hopefully, on the powder wagons. They had given Torix and Bly the best they could offer without all dying in the cause. He bellowed ‘Back!’ and jumped off the wagon. ‘Back! Back! Back!’ he yelled. His men took off, those who were still able, and ran for their lives. Stern felt the wind in his face, his chest heaving. Any moment he expected to feel an arrow, or a sword, smash into his spine. He glanced back. They were making headway, opening the gap with the chasing enemy. They came to the first marker, a sword stuck in the ground with a helm on it, and he shouted, ‘Down!’ Every man dropped like a stone, and the twenty bowmen rose up from the grass in front of them to shoot at the chasing men. One, two, three, four, five, Stern counted then he was off running again. ‘Back! Back! Back!’ he yelled and his men ran with him, the bowmen too. He came to the second marker and he yelled, ‘Bowmen!’ He and his men carried on running and the archers turned and peppered the advancing enemy with five more volleys of arrows. Then they ran again.
He could see the third marker up ahead. Stern’s chest was heaving painfully. He wasn’t used to running and his legs seemed huge and heavy. As he reached the marker he slowed gratefully and turned to face the remaining enemy. Then the rest of Hayden’s army, the camp-followers and the lame and sick, rose from the grasses on either side and ran screaming to attack the enemy flanks with whatever weapons they had. Stern felt a sword-hilt thrust into his hand and he raced back, fatigue forgotten. He gutted one man and slit the throat of a second. As the enemy’s blood sprayed, Stern’s fizzed in his veins.
It was a short fight. The chasing soldiers outnumbered them, barely, but they were exhausted by running in armour and were no match for the City warriors, full of blood-lust and out for vengeance.
When it was over and the enemy survivors started backing, then running, to the safety of their army, Hayden took a lighted brand from the fire they’d built and thrust it into the long grass. The wind from the north was brisk and the dry grasses quickly caught, and the roaring flames raced towards the enemy horde.
Under the cover of smoke Hayden and his ragtag army set off north-east, the able supporting the injured. By nightfall they came to the campsite their scouts had picked out the previous day. They slumped down, tired but jubilant. As they tended the wounded, Brel reported that they had lost only fourteen to the enemy’s estimated one hundred-odd. A good day’s work, but Hayden would only consider the action a success when they heard the powder wagons explode. They waited and listened. As time passed jubilation turned to anxiety, then fear for their two comrades.
That night a storm came in from the west, rough winds and sheeting rain. Hayden and his officers sat crouched under a makeshift shelter and watched the south, waiting for Torix and Pieter Bly to return. But they never came.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE PATCHWORK GULON sat in the corner of a palace storeroom dismantling a pigeon. The bird’s dry, dusty feathers made the creature cough and it looked at Valla each time it did so, as if in apology.
It was the gulon which had forced Valla to sleep with the stores. Although she was not a member of any of the centuries she still wore the black and silver armour, and the leader of the Silver Bears grudgingly allowed her to use their barracks. But the presence of the gulon, in the short time each day Valla left the empress to sleep, was repugnant to the other soldiers. They had heard the tale of its revival from near-death and, rather than valuing it as Valla thought they might, they glared at it suspiciously and made protective signs against evil when it was near. They did not mistreat it, they did not dare, but in the end Valla moved her straw mattress into a storeroom behind the palace kitchens so she would not have to endure their superstition and resentment.
The creature had recovered from its ordeal and now, Valla thought, the bald patch on its head seemed smaller and its ears less ragged. Was it younger? Was she? She was ready to believe it now she had experienced the empress’s power to heal. She had already seen Marcellus’ gift of destruction and she was in awe of the Serafim and content to believe they were gods, if earthly ones.
News came daily to the White Palace and each day it was worse. First the enemy had laid siege to the Great North Gate, then a second force attacked the Paradise Gate. And it was feared that a third army was marching on the Adamantine Breach, which still lay open and vulnerable almost a year since the flood which had destroyed the wall and the south of the City.
And the blackest rumours whispered that plague – that most terrifying of enemies – had broken out among the defenders of the two Great Gates.
People were fleeing the City. Roads in the south were crowded with the carriages of the rich and merchants’ carts, and the poor with their goods piled on donkeys or their own backs, all trying to get to the Seagate to escape by boat. ‘Cowards!’ Archange would cry when she heard this, and those around her agreed, but Valla kept her own counsel, thinking it was all well and good to be defiant of war and pestilence when it was so far away from this monotonous life on the mountain.
Valla thrilled at the prospect of marching into battle again. She hoped she could win permission to leave the old woman’s side, to use her old skills in the service of the City, but knew it would not be allowed. Archange had made it clear when she permitted her to don the black and silver livery again: Valla was to be the empress’s body servant. It was a position of great honour, but Valla was already chafing against its bonds.
She could only stand guarding the empress and watch, with some contempt, the trivialities the old woman must endure. People were always seeking audience with Archange – warriors, counsellors, merchants and common folk. And even in time of war a part of the empress’s day was spent discussing drainage, or imports of stone and timber, or the celebration of the many and various festivals. This morning she was required to slaughter ten white doves to please the goddess Vashta as her reign of long nights approached.
And as the days crawled by Valla began to fear for Archange herself, for she saw her at those times when few others did, when she awoke from a doze, confused and disorientated, or when drained by a day of endless duties. And now, as the days drew in, the empress seemed to sicken. She looked older and smaller. She walked, if she stood at all, leaning on one of her guards or servants. Her eyes were dull, without vitality or depth. Her granddaughter Thekla was now resident in the palace and the pair spent long hours together, when even Valla was excluded.
Valla learned that the old counsellor Dol Salida had taken on much of the empress’s routine work, but the man was dead now, murdered, it was believed, by the same intruders who had killed the security chief. Archange’s other close confidant Evan Broglanh had gone missing back in the summer, no one knew where. The only people Archange confided in these days were
the granddaughter and a black-eyed lord called Jona Lee Gaeta who had slithered into Dol Salida’s place. This Jona was silent of foot and quiet of voice and he had a stillness about him – like a black cat guarding a mouse-hole – which Valla found disquieting. Scuttlebutt among the soldiers said the Gaetas had mystical powers, and she had seen invocations to the gods of ice and fire made behind Jona’s back. The Iron Palace, the Gaeta home on the south-west face of the Shield, was a place where, it was said, few went in and even fewer came out.
Meanwhile Rubin languished in the cells under sentence of death. As the days trickled by, Valla found it increasingly hard to believe that, with the City under such dire threat, Archange would fulfil her intention of having him dragged down the mountain to Amphitheatre for formal butchery. A treacherous thought stole into her mind, that on the day before the execution, if Archange had still not relented, Valla could somehow free him herself. The very idea made her sweat, not because she feared the empress’s wrath, though she did, but because every moment of her life since she had first donned armour had been devoted to the City and its ruler. If she defied that ruler’s orders now, then what meaning did her life have?
In the time that was left to him, there was little she could do but ensure Rubin got enough to eat. She was not permitted to see him.
‘Valla!’ a soldier yelled. The empress was awake and Valla’s day began. She rose and buckled on her sword-belt and snatched up her helm. She glanced at the gulon, which had paused in its meal to look up at her, then she left.
Archange would normally tolerate only one armed guard while she was alone, and then only when she was awake and in her day rooms, although a dozen were always on alert close by. When Valla was given the role she had been filled with pride, but as the days passed pride had swiftly been subsumed beneath frustration. Now the City was under threat and the very air seemed thick with dread, Valla wanted to be close to the heart of the action as she had been as a Warhound.
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