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The bombardment had begun. Catapults and ballistae fired at targets on the walls, with particular concentration on the fortress at the main gate. Each of the four towers there had a large ballista, and the roof of the keep in between was packed with at least two hundred archers and heavy footmen.
The lower towers along the walls each mounted a catapult or ballista. These were firing at the artillery of the besiegers and the mantlets and screening troops around them. The wind was making artillery fire difficult, particularly for the ballistae.
Behind the siege engines, the allied army was forming up. Ordered companies of footmen and archers stood facing the walls. Interspersed with them, about a quarter of the waiting forces, were mercenary irregulars or milling bands of hillmen. Orderly or not, every unit had a squad of men with long scaling ladders.
At the center, facing the main gate, was a large body of hillmen under Warlord Kurvan. Behind him were Generals Sanctari, Nissas, and Pelias, with companies of heavy spearmen and swordsmen from Teroia, Aledri, and Megasi. In front of even Kurvan, however, were Talaos and his company of volunteers.
Talaos himself, in his new armor, was watching a strange machine rolling up the corridor between Kurvan's forces and the next body of troops to the left. It looked to have been built on the huge, multi-wheeled base of a siege tower. However, instead of a tower, it had a single forward facing wooden wall, a giant mantlet plated in iron sheets and about fifteen feet high.
Mounted behind the mantlet was something stranger, a colossal siege ladder more than fifty feet high, as tall as the battlements of the keep at the great gate, and twice the height of the walls or the ordinary siege ladders. At the base of the ladder was a mechanical device that had clearly been improvised from a catapult. Talaos guessed it adjusted the angle of the ladder.
Underneath the base platform and between the giant wheels was a space with rows of attached crossbeams and handles, and behind it were long beams with more handles. However, for the time being, the entirety was being pulled along by mule teams hitched to the front.
Standing around Talaos were the Madmen, and it was not long before they noticed the object of his interest.
"What in the goatsucking hells is that?" asked Kyrax, black brows pressed together.
"It looks like our scaling ladder," answered Talaos, lightly.
"Or a fine place to collect arrows," added Larogwan.
As the machine rolled closer, they could see that the top of the ladder had huge iron hooks raised high, a bit like the fangs of some beast ready to strike, and attached by long chains on a system of pulleys to the device at the base.
Theron was walking alongside the thing, with a crew of his engineers at his side, and a black smile on his face. After a short while, the machine was in its place in front of Talaos's men. The mule teams were unhitched and led away. Theron and his gallows grin reached Talaos.
"Like it?" he growled.
"Does that catapult at the bottom snap it into place, with those iron fangs gripping the wall?" replied Talaos.
"That's right, locked on with a jolt fast as a catapult, and a thousand times harder to tip over than a scaling ladder. Just as exposed though. A bunch of troops from the irregulars will be pushing it along."
"Will you be operating the mechanism from onboard?"
"Yep. My engineers and I."
"Then I like it."
"We'll be behind the mantlet," added Theron, as if looking for a reaction.
He got none.
Talaos looked around at his seven companions, eyeing them each in turn. Kyrax looked as if he wanted to say something. Vulkas had a huge grin on his face. Firio boggled. The others were mostly tense, with minds perhaps on the battle ahead.
Talaos laughed, then spoke, "Today we'll show them why we're called the Madmen."
"The Madmen, and The Storms Own Son!" roared Vulkas as the others broke into laughs.
His company of volunteers were watching the scene with interest. He shouted to them cheerfully in his clear deep voice, "Sometimes men, the first day on the job is a little rough!"
He'd handpicked them for being rough men, and the reply was a chorus of harsh laughs and a gallery of grim looks. Just as he'd hoped.
Up on the walls and towers of Avrosa, the defenders seemed to have noticed the strange device before them, for catapult shots began to land in the general area ahead. They were short and wide of the mark, but the intention was clear.
The wind was now blowing with enough force that the ballistae on either side were no longer effective at the ranges they were firing. Bolts went wide, sometimes turning and then tumbling end over end, off uselessly to the side.
Closer to the front, Talaos heard Warlord Tescani roaring to the ballista crews to hold fire, and the catapult crews nearby to reposition to target the keep in advance of Talaos. Further away were Generals Dromno on the left, and Aro on the right. They were directing the troops, in their thousands, waiting with drawn weapons and ready scaling ladders.
A messenger arrived, riding hard. He shouted to Talaos, "Orders from command! Begin the assault!" He then rode immediately to his next task.
The wind roared.
The first drop of rain fell.
The first bolt of lightning struck in the sky overhead.
Talaos felt the thrill of it run through him.
Joyously, he felt the life, danger, and power of it.
In a voice so loud, deep, and clear, it rose above the thunder, he shouted to his men.
"Now men! I will climb to the top, and ride this beast to the enemy! When it has its fangs in that keep, I'll clear the way. Follow me and rip their throats out!"
Talaos's men, Madmen and the new volunteers roared with weapons in the air or clashing against shields. The ordinary irregulars assigned to push the machine looked on with wary expressions, but they set to work.
As the gigantic ladder rolled forward, locked back and nearly vertical, Talaos climbed to the top. Up here, he felt the wind even more keenly, cold and pitiless, wild and free. Light rain, growing slowly heavier, splashed around him. Thunder boomed and lighting strikes raked the sky. He looked around him, and for a moment took in the panorama of the battlefield.
Fourteen thousand men were either working siege weapons, marching forward toward death, or working with straining backs in support of those who were. Spears in ranks and files, like fields of some deadly crop, and tall scaling ladders like hedge rows. Bands of hillmen howled war cries as they swarmed forward.
On the left and right soldiers advanced. They reached the line of siege engines and mantlets, and pushed the latter forward. From the allied catapults went a volley of well coordinated stones the size of barrels. Some went crashing into the ground, others against the formidable walls of the keep. One smashed into the top of the left front tower, destroying the ballista and wreaking slaughter on the men around it. Another swept into the crowded men atop the keep, leaving a wake of blood and mangled bodies, and rolled onward over the back parapet.
From the walls, catapults fired at the advancing men. One crashed into a mantlet, shattering it and sending splintered wood flying backward into the bodies of the men behind. Another went rolling along like a gigantic child's ball as hillmen dodged aside. Some weren't fast enough, and their corpses smeared the trampled grass.
Stones fired toward Talaos, and the mighty mechanical beast he rode. One flew past his head, no more than five feet away, and continued far behind to smite ruin among Kurvan's men. Even over the wind, Talaos heard Kurvan's roaring, growling curses.
The great machine rolled forward. The walls were getting closer.
Below and all around, men marched forward into the east wind and the flying stones.
Joy and fury rose within his spirit at the sight.
With them rose power.
The lightning was striking more frequently now. All around him, lighting up the sky and illuminating the carnage below. His spirit rose and the wind howled. Talaos howled to it in greeting. His
voice echoed, roaring with the gale.
Talaos braced himself atop the next to topmost rung of the ladder. He drew his swords and raised them to the sky. He could feel it now; the power within him making itself manifest. Electricity coursed through his body, crackled on his skin, ran through his blades. He could see it, arcing blue-white along the steel. He heard shouts of surprise, faint in the wind, down below.
He laughed like the thunder, as loud and as deep.
He felt the light in his eyes, the power in him and around him. It radiated in crackling blue-white lines from his hands and his brow.
He reveled in the storm.
He called to the lightning, and it obeyed.
There was a brilliant blue-white flash, and the boom of thunder.
The strike touched the long sword in his outstretched right hand.
Across the battlefield, not so far now, on the walls of the keep and the towers around, men in armor and dark gray tunics waited. Some carried large round shields, painted dark gray with white clouds and thunderbolts. All looked at him wide eyed with fear.
Thunder in the sky, thunder on the enemy shields, and merciless thunder in his spirit.
Death and battle were all around him.
Death awaited those before him.
It was close now.
Every moment seemed slower than the last.
Men, wind and rain all seemed to slow down. Everything but him. Or perhaps he sped up.
The ballista on the right front tower fired a bolt. It moved slowly, ridiculously, his way. He watched it hurtle toward the center of his chest. Easily he turned aside, and with his down swept blade, cut it in half as it passed.
Eons seemed to follow as the sluggish men ahead watched him with gaping mouths and weapons held unsteadily in feeble hands. The rain dropped slowly around them.
It was taking too long.
He climbed to the top rung of the ladder, balancing on the wind, swords high and arcing bright with his power.
They weren't far away now. Not far at all. No farther than a javelin could fly.
He leapt.
Across the sheltering sky he leapt at them, and laughed as he flew.
Weak and slow, they hesitated and stepped back.
Delaying their deaths only by moments.
He hurtled over the battlement, wreathed in lightning, and into the massed enemy.
With a sweep of his long blade, he cut a man in half at the waist, and in the same motion, sheared another foe's head from his shoulders. A third enemy stumbled backwards bleating in fear, so slowly he seemed trapped in amber. Talaos stopped his bleating with a short blade through his mouth, freed the blade by slicing it sideways out of his head, then spun around to take out another foe's legs with his long blade.
Life, vital, furious, strong, merciless as the storm, and as nature itself, coursed through him. He spun, whirled, struck and slew. Electricity arced in the wake of his movements. Foes died with swords hanging loosely, uselessly in terrified hands. He laughed, wild and heedless.
An eternity of arc-lit slaughter passed. He grew impatient. Then at last some found their courage. Ever so slowly, foes formed a rank with spears and locked round shields. Others charged with swords ready. Archers behind drew back their bows, and fired them uselessly in the wind. Arrows crawled toward him , only to be guided away harmlessly by the caressing wind.
Talaos advanced on them, stalking forward with blades bright as thunderbolts, eyes flashing lightning and the grin of a wolf beneath.
The men with swords moved to attack him, as slowly as if in a waking dream. He leapt forward, cleaved one man through the shoulder, leapt back again with a smile, and yet still they moved no faster. Their eyes, ever so slowly, widened with fresh fear.
Fast as the whirlwind, he attacked with scything, stabbing blades. One man, then another, and then more, weak, slow, and dead. He glanced around, the swordsmen were all slain, bodies scattered in pieces and their blood washing the stones along with the slowly dropping rain.
Behind him, he heard the slow snap and the clang of heavy iron as the scaling beast reached the wall and clamped its own wolf-jaws on the keep.
Before him, half the keep still had living foes, a hundred or more. They formed a shield wall with lowered spears. Others behind had axes or swords. The archers had given up and drawn short swords. A few hurled javelins. Slowly at first, like twigs in a gentle stream, they flew his way. He knocked one aside casually with his armored forearm. Then, others came, a little faster, then faster still. He dodged them. The men behind the shield wall seemed to be waking from their dreams, action and intent returning to their sluggish limbs.
They moved faster yet, almost like men, but they did not move closer.
One hundred of them, and him. He grinned his feral grin.
The speed of the world seemed to catch up at last, or he slowed down to that of it.
Then behind him, the Madmen howled and came pouring over the battlement. Vulkas roared, and Talaos laughed joyfully beside him. Together they charged toward the ranks ahead. At their sides charged Larogwan, Kyrax, Epos, and Halmir, like savage beasts against sheep.
Larogwan hurled a hand axe over the edge of an enemy's shield and between the man's eyes. As the foe toppled, javelins from Epos and Halmir pierced the chests of men behind. The beasts reached the sheep. Vulkas crushed a man to the ground with his mattock, as Kyrax shoved a man's shield aside with his own and rammed a sword through his ribs.
Talaos leapt high and brought his long blade down to cleave a foe's helm and head in two. Halmir dodged a spear and split the wielder's shield apart with his axe. Then he kicked the man backwards as he spun around and brought his axe into another's shoulder. Larogwan took a glancing spear strike on his shield, stepped inside the wielder's reach and used the rim of his shield to force the other's aside. With the opening created, he brought his axe into the foe's neck.
Three enemies jabbed at Epos with spears. One glanced off his sturdy, closed-faced helm. He replied by putting his own spear into his opponent's unprotected eye. As the foe dropped, he coolly glanced another spear off his shield, brought his own low, and ran it through the opponent's thigh. Then he made a measured step to one side, avoiding the spear of his remaining foe. The other had stepped too far with the strike, letting his shield shift away from the gap in armor under his outstretched spear arm. Epos ran his spear through the spot.
The center of the enemy front line stood ragged and shattered. Talaos and his five beasts tore into the wound, slaying as they widened it. Behind them and around them, here and there, other enemies still lived. Others came forward past their own ranks to surround the invaders. Firio and Imvan, like a pair of predatory falcons or ravens seeing prizes, descended on them.
Now, up the ladder and over the battlement, came the rest of Talaos's men. Grim and terrible, they advanced on the wavering enemy. Talaos, even as he slew, looked back at his advancing men and laughed. The enemies all round wavered, seeing their deaths upon them.
And then eighty grim and merciless men charged, like the flanks and claws of a beast with Talaos and his Madmen as the jaws. With them, death arrived. They howled, roared and slaughtered. It was over swiftly, and then they had only corpses around them. The rain poured from the sky in sheets as lightning flashed overhead.
Talaos laughed. Victory, he thought. But only the first. They had work to do.
The front left tower of the keep was a graveyard of shattered wood and bones. The other three still had ballistae, and even in this wind, they could hit at such close range. The crews in the towers were working furiously to reposition their weapons to do exactly that, while archers took aim at targets close enough to have some chance of success.
"Vulkas!" roared Talaos, voice echoing like thunder, "Take those doors out!"
The doors at the bases of the towers were iron-bound and strong, built to withstand assault. Vulkas ran, massive as a hurtling boulder, to the one at the front right of the keep.
He made a
turning leap, war mattock swinging wide.
"ONE!" Vulkas bellowed.
The mattock smashed into the door and sent it flying backward. Soldiers on the other side were crushed in a spray of blood against the opposite wall. Beyond the doorway were stairs, up and down. The giant charged toward a second tower, that on the back right.
A group of Talaos's men charged into the open door, and both up and down the stairs.
"Larogwan, take charge of the men below! Halmir, lead the men up top!" shouted Talaos.
They nodded and ran.
Vulkas reached the second tower.
"TWO!"
The gigantic warrior turned low, mattock swinging around and upward like the mallet in a game of ball. It smashed the door inward from the bottom, flipping its jagged remnants backward to cut a soldier behind it in half at the waist.
"Kyrax, up! Epos, down!" roared Talaos as he followed Vulkas to the final tower.
As they went, another group of Talaos's men poured behind Kyrax and Epos through the shattered tower door.
On top of the first tower, Halmir was leading a swift slaughter.
"THREE!" roared the giant, as he reached the last tower.
Vulkas whirled, mattock upward, then down again in an arc that cracked the door in half, with splinters flying inward. This time no one had been so unwise as to guard behind it.
"Vulkas, clear the tower!" bellowed Talaos, "Firio! Imvan! With me!"
As Vulkas crashed his way up the stairs, smashing foes foolish enough to stand in his way, Talaos descended. He grinned with the feral joy of the hunt, ready to face the unknown prey below. His beasts, he thought, were now leading hunts of their own. Behind him, companions on his hunt, were his ravens Firio and Imvan, and his wild, ravening men of death.
4. Blood and Wrath
Talaos leapt down the winding stairs as the sounds of battle raged all around. They circled twice, and he came to the landing of the next floor down. There was a sturdy door with an iron handle and a lock. His lock picks from Carai were with the remnants of his old gear in camp. The door was sturdy, he thought, but not so strong as the doors outside. He gave it a kick with the same force that had knocked a man ten feet, and the door flew open.
The Storm's Own Son (Book 2) Page 4