Callotec had been cautious, calculating, when he came at them in Towers’ Shadow. Sullen, Yulan understood at once, was not. They all came, on all sides, at once.
Behind the front ranks of spearmen and swordsmen marched rows of archers. They halted, some fifty paces short of the wall, while the rest marched on. Yulan, descended to stand at the ring wall just beside the modest gate, ducked down as the first sheet of arrows leapt into the air. He was slightly surprised to find Akrana crouching there beside him.
“Don’t you need to be watching over Kasuman and Callotec?” he asked.
“Callotec’s bound hand and foot, tight enough to squeeze them off, and stilled by a sharp tap to the head. Kasuman will not wake for an hour or two, even without my attentions. I think that is long enough for me to find more useful employment elsewhere.”
“It is,” Yulan said.
One way or the other, he doubted this would last even a small part of an hour.
“You’ve done well, these last few days, Akrana,” he said to her as arrows began to rattle against the walls of the keep, and to drop down into the narrow yard around it. “You might do yet better today, don’t you think? There’s only two things inside these walls that might unlock this cage Sullen’s put us in: the Clamour, and you.”
Then suddenly a chunk of stone was blown out from the very wall behind which Yulan was sheltering. It fell painfully on to his back. He glimpsed the blur of the arrow that had torn the stone loose flashing over his head and striking the keep in a cloud of mortar and chips. Punching through that wall and beyond it.
“Clevered arrows,” muttered Akrana.
Yulan glanced round in alarm. In time to see one of the Free’s archers, venturing to rise above the keep’s parapet and loose an arrow of his own, struck in the centre of the chest. A hole was torn straight through him, big enough to pass a fist from front to back. He was thrown backwards heels over head. The arrow that had killed him went feathers-deep into a stone block behind him, splitting it.
Akrana and Yulan rose together as the first of the Clade men topped the wall beside them, clambering up on the backs and shoulders of his comrades. They had brought no ladders, no ropes to this siege. They would simply swarm the Kingshouse. Flood it.
Akrana fought in silent fury, weaving with her blade a terrible web that swept back and away every hand or arm or body cresting the wall. Yulan stood at her side, and matched her. Bettered her. There was no space for worries about Clevered arrows – any arrows – only the constant, unrelenting need to thrust and stab, and hold that tiny stretch of meagre wall. It was everything to him. He heard the arrows, though. He was aware of the occasional thump and boom as they smashed stone from stone.
“Get the Bereaved into the keep,” he shouted to Akrana.
He glanced after her as she leaped down into the yard, and saw Clade swordsmen spilling over the top of the ring wall. Setting feet on the low walkway and looking around for someone to kill. He ran at them. Swept them away in veils of blood.
He felt a hard blow, then lancing pain in the back of his left shoulder. Spun about, but there was no one there. He fumbled clumsily over his shoulder with his right hand and felt an arrow standing there, deep in his flesh. The vision flashed through his mind of what a Clevered arrow would have done, tearing away his whole shoulder and arm and sending them tumbling like butchered meat. It distracted him for a dangerous moment, and he saw the hammer coming towards his face too late to do anything but jump off the walkway, out of its path.
He landed on his back, snapping the arrow, and he could not help but cry out at the pain. The warrior who had tried to kill him bared his teeth and leapt down, hammer raised, straight at him. Yulan rolled and rose and lashed his sword round in a flat arc as he turned away. It hit his assailant on the side of the head and sent him down, dead weight.
He took a moment to look around. The Clade were spilling over the outer wall now. There were bodies everywhere, but even the Free could not stem this tide coming at them from every direction at once. Not when they were so few. So wearied.
“Into the keep!’ he cried. “As high as you can go.”
They rushed from every side to the keep’s entrance. The door that must once have been there had been stripped away, so they could not prevent pursuit. Only outrun it, for a moment or two. Yulan turned in the doorway. Akrana brushed past him, bearing the Bereaved like a sleeping child in her arms. He saw one of Rudran’s lancers coming, reached for him, but the man was cut down from behind.
Yulan darted backwards into the gloom of the tiny keep. He glimpsed the Clamour, hulking there in the shadows. Raking its fingers over the cobbles. Shifting its weight from one haunch to the other. Akrana went up the steps before him. His shoulder was throbbing, as if the arrowhead buried there was beating like an angry heart.
“Let it loose, Hestin!’ he cried as he climbed.
A Clevered arrow smashed through the wall an arm’s length from his face, spraying sharp stone fragments across his cheek Drawing blood, he thought. The Clade’s warriors were boiling into the keep behind them.
“Let it loose, Hestin!’ he cried again. “We’ve nothing else left! Let it loose!”
And she did.
Yulan fell on to his face on the boards of the floor above. He felt someone – Hamdan? Akrana? – probing at the arrowhead in his shoulder with hard, stiff fingers. He hissed out his pain.
“Leave it there,” he heard Akrana saying. “Do more harm to pull it out.”
The Clamour’s howl rose, and shook the keep. Yulan felt the floorboards trembling against his cheek. The wailing ran through his head and scoured all thought from his mind. Mixed in with it there was screaming, the crash of stones torn loose. The tumult passed out into the yard.
Yulan got to his feet and ventured to a narrow window, to look out upon the carnage. Sullen’s scores of warriors were pouring back out over the walls. They had thrown open the gates that they might escape that way. The Clamour came after them, tore them down, broke bodies. It was too wild, too huge, for the gateway to contain, so it burst it asunder, shattered the wooden posts that were as thick as a man’s thigh, brushed rock from the walls with its shoulders. It surged out on to the hill.
“Will she get it back?” he heard Hamdan wondering.
“I don’t know,” he said. He had a suspicion, though. Not a happy one. It might have been better to have died, if the Free’s last legacy was to be the Clamour, unbound.
A thud behind them made them turn. Rudran had come stumbling, hobbling down from the keep’s upper floor. He had fallen as he descended, almost landing on Kasuman’s prostrate, somnolent form.
“I can fight,” the lancer rasped at Yulan, seeing the protestation in his captain’s face. “You don’t think you need me?”
“Maybe,” Yulan said. “We’ll see soon enough.”
He turned back to the view from the window. The slopes of the hillock were a mass of fleeing blue-clad figures. Flowing down as if blown before a plunging wind. The Clamour was faster. It raged amongst them, left a trail of trampled and crushed and dismembered bodies in its wake. A bloody slick down the flank of the hill.
A horn sounded out, cutting through even the Clamour’s incessant ululation. Yulan looked for its source. Sullen stood there, a hundred paces from the Clamour, blowing that horn with all his might. Not fleeing. Nor were the dozen archers kneeling in a line before him, their bows drawn, held flat, aiming at the Clamour.
“What’s this?” Akrana asked, coming to the window and leaning past him.
The Clamour turned towards the sound of the horn. Sullen let it fall from his lips. The Clamour began to bound across the hillside towards him, towards the archers. Its fists made a deep thunder in the earth, gouging loam. Sullen held aloft a long spear, with a stone blade like a wide leaf.
“Oh, fool,” breathed Yulan, suddenly understanding. Seeing what Sullen had done, and meant to do. And not knowing whether it was possible or not.
The archers loosed
their arrows. Twelve shafts flashed across the rapidly diminishing distance to the Clamour. Staggered it and flung it about as they tore flesh from it, plunged so deep into its body that they disappeared. Flicked a ragged ear away. Turned a hand to bloody mist on the air.
“Can they kill it with Clevered arrows?” Akrana wondered aloud.
“Not with the arrows alone,” said Yulan dully.
Sullen pushed through the line of archers as they set fresh shafts to their strings. The Clamour reeled. Recovered itself. Came on as fast and fierce as ever, on the stump of a hand. Moments. It would be on them in moments.
Twelve more arrows flew. The archers fled as soon as they were loosed. Sullen ran too, but not in flight. He rushed towards the Clamour, following those arrows in, spear levelled.
Sprays of blood and skin surrounded the Permanence as the second volley battered home. Arrows passed right through it. A crimson cloud of cruel injury enveloped the beast. And Sullen threw himself through that cloud, driving the long spear deep into its flesh.
The Clamour reared and flailed. Sullen was tossed into the air. The spear broke in his hands and he tumbled away, clutching only the stub of it. The rest of it remained planted in the Permanence. It bellowed as it never had before. Yulan covered his ears, ignoring the pain in his shoulder as he did so. It was far less than the pain inflicted by that desperate, immense cry.
“He bent the Weaponsmith to his will,” Yulan shouted amidst the terrible cacophony, not knowing whether anyone would hear him. “Probably killed him in the making of that spear.”
He saw the Clamour sinking down on to the ground, losing its form. Softening, like wax put to the flame. It writhed and flailed at the ground with loose limbs, tearing great furrows in the turf. It died, if a Permanence could die. It grew still. Silent. A mound of corrupted flesh, slumped into shapelessness.
Sullen got stiffly to his feet. Swayed slightly. Held the broken shaft of the killing spear above his head, and brandished it in the direction of the keep. Behind him, below him, his warriors were gathering themselves at the bottom of the hill. Setting themselves once again into ordered ranks. Beginning to climb.
Upstairs, high in the keep, Yulan could hear Hestin crying out.
39
Came The Winter
Yulan turned heavily away from the window. Saw how pitifully few of his people remained to him, crowded into the part-floored room in the heart of the Kingshouse’s keep. Lebid was gone. Dead somewhere at the wall or on the keep. All but one of Rudran’s men.
Kerig came staggering, feeble and shrunken, down the stairs.
“What’s happening?” he asked faintly.
The Clever’s cheeks were sunken and grey. His skin still a tapestry of fresh scars and yellowing bruises.
“Get back upstairs,” Yulan said. “See if you can quiet Hestin. Help her.”
Hamdan was standing in the aperture that led out on to the narrow parapet. He sent one arrow after another skimming away. His face was expressionless. His movements curt and precise. He reached back to his quiver, and his hand found nothing there. His shoulders sagged for a moment, then he backed away from the light.
“Out of arrows,” he said quietly. “Perhaps we can hope they are too. Out of the nasty kind, at least.”
Yulan could hear them coming in through the gate. Running feet, eager cries. He picked up his shield from where he had rested it against the wall. The weight of it put a painful pull into his injured shoulder, but he was far beyond caring about such things now.
“Where’s the Bereaved?” he asked
“Already up top,” Hamdan told him. “I’ve got one of my boys watching over it.”
“Yulan!’ came the cry from down below, beneath their feet. Sullen. “Did you see what I did, Yulan?” the Clade’s commander called up.
Yulan had never heard such life in the man’s voice. Such fierce vigour. Such pride.
“Everyone to the top,” he muttered, and they began to move to the stair.
All save Akrana. She was making for the doorway that led out on to the exposed parapet. She hefted her sword with intent.
“Callotec’s moment has come,” she said to Yulan, but he shook his head.
“That’s mine to do.”
Clevered arrows came bursting up through the floor, erupting in clouds of dust and splinters, crashing through the ceiling. Flying the height of the keep, tearing out its innards. Rudran howled as one hissed through him, in through his groin, blowing out bone and gristle from his shoulder. He toppled backwards and fell through the floor, crashing down on to the archers below.
“Up! Up!’ shouted Yulan.
They went, but he did not. He turned at the foot of that last narrow flight of stairs. Two men were within his reach, if he but chose to extend his blade. Both of them he would gladly see dead, and gladly let loose his own life for the winning of that prize. Only one of them might, by dying, offer any faint glimmer of hope for the rest of the Free, though.
“I’m ready for you now, Sullen,” he shouted.
The arrows stopped coming. There were whispers down below. Groans of the injured, the dying from above. Yulan did not want to know who it was, how many. He did not need to know.
It was not Sullen that came charging up the stair but his warriors, pouring up one after another. And Yulan killed them as they came. With sword and shield he hacked and battered at every movement, every flash of blue. He gorged himself on them, and none of it sated him.
Until at last a spear tip found his calf and pierced the muscle there. He went down on one knee. Caught an axe on his shield as it swept down upon him.
He was pulled violently backwards, thrown on to his side.
“Get out of the way,” Akrana said.
He stared at her. She had no blade, no shield.
“What are you doing?” he cried.
“I will not lose what family I have left,” she said distantly. “Get them out of the keep. It will not survive.”
And then came the winter. Searing cold blasting down through the keep. Crackling frost racing across the walls, spreading veins of ice through every crevice and cranny. Crystals of ice springing into being across the skin of her face. A white storm of shards and blinding snow that went before Akrana as she descended into the mass of Clade men below.
Yulan shielded his eyes against the wintry gale. His breath burned in his lungs, as if ice was crackling in there too. The air was like splintered glass. He could feel it rasping away skin from his face. Snow and ice churned all around him, all but blinded him.
Through the storm he glimpsed Hamdan struggling down from above, barely supporting Hestin above him, Kerig below. Yulan limped to them, and took as much of Kerig’s weight as he could. He shook his shield from his arm and let it fall. He tried to sheathe his sword, but his arm was clumsy, his feet unsteady. The blade too he dropped to the trembling floor.
They were shaken back and forth by the tempest. Not just by that, Yulan realised. The keep was breaking apart. Ice was tearing through its bones, heaving them one from another. The floor beneath his feet was slick with a skin of ice, buckling and cracking as the boards beneath broke. Stone blocks were wrenched out from the walls by great gelid columns thrusting up from below.
“Is there anyone else?” Yulan shouted.
“I don’t think so,” the archer said. “I don’t know.”
“We’ll have to jump,” cried Yulan. “This is coming down.”
They struggled out on to the parapet, and the sky howled at them. There was nothing but white fury swirling about them, flinging lances of ice and rock-hard hail. Even as they stepped out from the meagre shelter of the keep’s walls, even as Yulan moved towards Callotec to drag the man up, stonework ruptured and groaned and great slabs of stone went sliding away into the storm. Half the terrace upon which they stood tore itself free and slipped into nothingness, carrying Callotec’s prostrate form with it.
Yulan cursed, and backed away from the ragged, crumbling edge. He loo
ked down over the battlements. He could see nothing, not even the ground. He cast his shield aside, vaulted over and plunged down into the winter maelstrom. He landed hard, on a frozen corpse that shattered beneath him. It did not hurt his wounded leg, because he could feel nothing there. No sensation, in leg or arm or hand. Hamdan lowered first Hestin and then Kerig down to him, all fumbling numbly.
“What about the Bereaved?” Hamdan shouted, invisible in the ice blizzard. “Kasuman?”
“Leave them,” cried Yulan. He could feel his flesh dying. He could feel frost trying to grow across his skin. His whole body was shaking violently, so that he was not even certain how far he could walk. A great net of ice had enveloped the outside of the keep. He could see the huge building blocks of its outer skin crumbling to dust as the ice strove to drag it down into the earth.
“Leave them,” he shouted again. “There’s no time. We’ll find them after, if there’s anything to find.”
Hamdan dropped to the ground, and even as he did so, the keep began to collapse. The storm and the ice tore it apart and dragged it down.
They fled, the four of them, out over the crumbling ring wall, as the Kingshouse died behind them, subsiding in a long, low grinding roar. Even that was quickly drowned out by the raging of the winter Akrana had shaped. There was no grass, only sheets of snow and frost over which they slid and slithered. Rushing down and away from the unleashed Hibernal entelech.
An unleashing that was surely beyond Akrana to turn back, Yulan thought dimly. Wren and Kerig had always wondered if she might not be stronger even than them, for all her reluctance to employ that strength. But this must be too much. It must be going to claim her.
The ice scored bloody tracks across Yulan’s hands. The wind tumbled him and rolled him, and spat him out at last on flat ground, where the winter did not seem to quite reach. The rest of them came stumbling, or crawling, out from the tempest. Fell to the ground beside him.
Hamdan, Kerig, Hestin. All that was left. All that had come safe out of the long storm. And Drann, perhaps. Somewhere out beyond the storm’s reach, perhaps.
The Free Page 34