by Ed McDonald
‘You crazy? Venzer has officers manning the western gates. Women with children are the only ones getting out. There’s talk of arming the Spills, putting them up here as militia.’
Similar sentiments echoed along the wall. Morale was collapsing faster than a leaf-smoker’s promises.
There was blood on the parapet. Today’s drudge had come with good armour and ladders that actually reached the top of the walls. In those numbers, and with the length of the wall, in some places they’d made it. Fighting had been fierce, and we’d lost men. Guesses said something like three or four hundred were out of action up top, two hundred in the streets below, and we only started with a few thousand. The more we lost, the more we’d lose in any following assault because keeping them off the wall would only get harder. I looked up at the jester’s cap fronds of the projectors of Nall’s Engine towering over the citadel. We’d put too much faith in it for too long. We should have had more men. It seemed so obvious now, at the end.
The room smelled of the dying.
I sat with my head in my hands in the silence that surrounded the only other occupant. He was out of it, dreaming his slow path down towards the final darkness that awaits us all. How long did he have? Impossible to say. From the moment we’re born the sands of our lives are draining through the hour glass. Living is the biggest steal we ever make, but nobody gets away with it. The city had learned to watch the minute hand rather than counting the hours as time ran down for us all. Tick, tick, tick.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I said, the only sound in that stinking pit. ‘Tell me what to do.’
All else was silence. Even Tnota’s breathing was quiet beyond hearing. The guns on the walls were still. The street beyond the shuttered window was empty. Seemed like the whole city had gone mute. Nobody had anything worth saying or enough optimism left to try saying it.
I’d found him alone. The surgeon may have been off tending more wounded, or maybe he’d done the smart thing and got the hell out already. Nobody had been in to change Tnota’s dressing or to pour water between his lips for some time. He’d soiled himself and his sheets were yellow with old sweat and mucus. I could bring myself to change the bandage on his stump and squeeze moisture between his chapped lips, but I couldn’t bring myself to undignify him by changing him like a baby. He was burning up and out of it. Wasn’t like he cared one way or the other.
What was I doing there anyway, wasting valuable minutes? I should have been getting some sleep. I should have been taking advantage of every whore still plying her trade. I should have been checking my kit. I should have been sneaking out of the postern gates and riding west as fast as I could manage. Too many options, and all of them vinegar sour.
I didn’t know why I’d come. Shouldn’t have come. When my boys got hurt, I left them to it until they either came back or went into the earth. Easier that way. Lessened the guilt. What was I doing wasting what might have been my last hours here, breathing the stink of a dying man’s air? I didn’t know. Maybe I just needed the reassurance of an old friend’s presence. There were few enough of those left.
Tnota made a sound, a grunt of distaste. Gummy eyes fought their way open a crack. He wheezed and groaned like a dog in a drought. Poor bastard. I dipped a rag into the pitcher of small beer and placed it against his lips. He responded, suckling at it, feeding like a babe in arms. I tried more and he sucked again. I squeezed a trickle into his mouth but he choked, spluttering liquid across his chin. His eyes sank closed again and his breathing returned to that pained wheeze.
Tnota had been a navigator before I met him, a good one. Could have signed on with the regulars, if he’d wanted it. He hadn’t. Simple man, Tnota. Knew what he liked, made sure that he got it. Valued the simple things in life: love and ale and sticking your feet up by a fire. I’d taken him out on a job, and after that we’d stuck together. Never really understood how I managed to pick them up, the long-timers like Nenn and Tnota. No glory in working for the crow. Just a long, certain walk into darkness.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told him. ‘You didn’t deserve this. We’re neither of us going to sit judgement’s scales with any confidence about the outcome, but you were far from the worst of us. Never murdered a man that I knew of, and that’s more than I can say for most of the sorry fuckers in this city.’ I dabbed a damp cloth across his forehead. Was glad he couldn’t see the glisten in my eyes. He’d never have let me live it down. ‘This was my fight. You’d have been the first one to get us out of here when the shit started frying. Wasn’t your fight. Never was.’
Tnota stirred enough to make a pained noise. I couldn’t tell whether he could hear me or was just sounding reflexively against the pain. He murmured something and I leaned in closer.
‘You want something?’
His eyes cracked open again. This time I thought he saw me.
‘Stand,’ he wheezed, a hiss of foul, dry breath.
‘You’re not even strong enough to sit up,’ I said. ‘Lie still. Rest.’
‘Stand,’ Tnota said again. His eyes widened, stared at me more intensely than I’d ever seen them.
‘Not yet. When you’re stronger,’ I said. If he got stronger. A big ‘if’.
Tnota’s left arm reached up and grabbed me by the hair. He drew my face in close.
‘You asked what … you should … do,’ he said. ‘Telling you … now. Stand.’
He released me, coughed and then sank back into his slow death.
32
They let us rest through the night, and came at us again with the dawn. I awoke to clamouring sirens and the flashing of the broken sky, blood-red Rioque casting a liquid sheen to the broken reality.
The remnants of my company formed up, the survivors of the night’s desertion. A junior officer squirmed for my attention, face glistening whitely with perspiration.
‘The marshal will activate Nall’s Engine today, won’t he, sir?’ he managed to ask.
‘He will,’ I lied, ‘or he won’t.’
‘Why, sir? Why hasn’t it been activated?’
I listened to the whining of the siren, its rise and fall timed to the drawing of breaths.
‘Best not to question the higher-ups. They got their reasons and we got our jobs. See to yours.’
At the foot of the stair leading to the ramparts, Ezabeth was waiting. She had fresh canisters across her harness. Men were saluting her as they went by. I stopped, met her eyes. Beautiful eyes, dark and intelligent. No fear in them, just determination. Somehow she stilled the fear in my chest and as it dissipated I felt Saravor’s dragon mocking me for my weakness. I had hoped that, giving the imminent destruction we all faced, he would have forgotten about me. What use was money going to be when the walls fell? He’d be the first rat off the ship if he wasn’t already gone. But then to Saravor it had never really been about money.
I offered Ezabeth my arm and she took it. We climbed like we were the lord and lady of the company. What a fucking pair we must have made. I felt the eyes upon us. Maybe it gave the boys some hope. It did me.
The day went hard. Arrow storms lashed the Dhoja, a handful of cannon gave some pretence at volley fire before they sputtered and died away. Emboldened, the Dhoja abandoned their pavisses and charged. Ladders were the order of the day again. They must have cut down a forest back in Dhojara to bring that many across the Misery. The drudge buzzing across the field of body parts and rotting corpses marched stoically with fanaticism guiding their steps. Not one company baulked as they drew near. When the Kings changed you, you loved them for it. I never understood why that was, but those poor bastards loved their overlords more than Tnota loved cock. Which was a lot.
We fought. Blades thrust over the parapet, ladders went clattering to the ground beyond, hammers and axes sang down on helms, rocks and old bricks went tumbling down. The first drudge to make the attempt weren’t in control of their own actions; the Darlings
had their mind-worms into them, sending them up first to encourage the rest of their fodder to the suicide. I speared a man whose eyes had the blank, glassy stare of the condemned. Some of them were already dead, the Darlings animating the bodies without a care.
The Dhoja did not come at us in waves, they just kept coming. My arms grew heavy and I moved to the back of the wall letting other younger, fresher bodies take my place. I saw Dantry swing an axe through a hand that clasped over the crenulations. Saw a couple of men give it up and flee the wall. Saw one of my new boys get grabbed by lifeless hands, dragged over the wall to break with the bodies below.
The neon letters across the citadel still read: COURAGE.
The Darlings were reluctant to engage. They’d not expected the previous day’s losses, but they must have had their orders as well because by midday they were hurling their sorcery at us. A dozen of my men got disintegrated by a kid that looked maybe thirteen. He must have been one of the oldest Darlings, turned when the Kings first took power. Ezabeth had it out with him, his dark power and her blasts of spun moonlight flashing back and forth across the sky. His wild blasts took down another twenty of our men before Ezabeth managed to bind him, burn him and send him scampering back into the Misery with his hair smouldering.
She fought like a legend. The dry, hard-air thumps of her percussive sorcery blew great holes in the Dhojaran formations. Along the wall Venzer’s remaining three Battle Spinners were sending bolts of light out against the Dhojaran horde but their strength was nothing compared to hers. Worse, one of them took an arrow in the chest, and another was overcome when, maybe emboldened by Ezabeth’s victory, he tried to match his skills against a Darling. The little bastard got the mind-worms into him, turned his power against us and we would have lost the wall if some nameless hero hadn’t managed to get a dagger into him.
The killing lasted all day. We survived it, exhausted, battered, weary. I was lucky, didn’t take any injury. Aside from Nenn and Dantry, I could find no living man left under my command. Maybe dead, maybe fled. No way to tell. The Dhojaran forces scuttled back to their camp. There were still thousands of them out there, too many to get a true count. We couldn’t kill them all, only hope that they’d run out of ladders.
The citadel said: COMMAND COUNCIL MEETING.
I decided to go and listen to the squawks. I wasn’t on the council, but there weren’t many officers left who were. Weren’t many left of anybody, in truth.
There was no fire, no gusto in that room. Nobody boasted of their kills or the performance of their men. Sallow, worn-out faces, confused expressions. There were chairs, a big table. Venzer had the head, the high-ups the chairs, and low-rankers like me stood around the edges.
‘Marshal, it is time,’ General Jonovech began. ‘The Misery swarms with Dhojaran legions. There can be no better moment. Unleash the fire upon them. Activate Nall’s Engine.’
‘General Jonovech is right,’ a colonel put in. ‘It is now or never, marshal. Why are we holding back?’
‘Crowfoot has his reasons,’ Venzer said. ‘Do not question me on this.’
‘What else are we here for if not to question this fucking madness?’ Jonovech said angrily. He was a rank-climber, a wiry and handsome man. ‘If half my men haven’t deserted by the time I get back to them I’ll be astonished. Activate the Engine. The Nameless may have their own ideas, but I for one don’t want to die here.’
They dissented. Nobody stood with Venzer. He was a fox beset by three dozen snapping hounds. He couldn’t get a word in, such was the yammering, the clamour to save themselves. Couldn’t blame them rightly. They didn’t know what I knew: that we had no defence. And I’d chosen to defend the walls anyway.
Venzer stopped trying to talk. He grew silent, shrivelled in on himself. I’d never seen so sad a sight in my life. He was the best soldier I knew, a hero, a warrior, a strategic mastermind and just then he was nothing more than a powerless old man, feeling the aches and pains that come with age. I met his eye only briefly, and I was the one that turned away. He must have known this was coming.
‘Give me the key.’ General Jonovech stood over Venzer, hand out. The officers bayed for it, howling as they sensed their quarry tiring. ‘Marshal,’ he went on, ‘with all of the respect I’ve had in serving you these past twenty years. Give me the key.’
He wasn’t a bad man. He was just doing what he thought was right. Maybe he was right. He’d just relieved Venzer of his command.
‘Activate it, then. If you can,’ Venzer said. He passed Jonovech the heavy iron key that symbolised control of the Engine. The general straightened up, knowing that he, now, was the man in charge. The rest of them all looked to him. He signalled to a junior officer.
‘Get on the communicator to Three-Six. Inform them that I will activate Nall’s Engine at midday.’ As the lieutenant scampered out, Jonovech looked sadly across to Former Range Marshal Venzer. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he said.
‘You will be sorrier come nightfall,’ Venzer said coldly.
The officers began to discuss their preparations for activating the Engine. I couldn’t bear to listen to it. I walked out.
In the office outside I guess the juniors had been listening in. They were grabbing what little there was of worth, throwing it into cloaks-turned-sacks and getting out. I guess they’d intercepted enough communications to have a good idea what Venzer knew. When your own side launches a coup, it’s time to run. Everyone runs, in the end.
It was over. I couldn’t believe it, but it was over. This war, everything I had known. All things turn to dust when the years have passed, but we never think to see that turning in our own lifetime. The man I’d been before the Range? He was gone, just as Ezabeth had said. No summers last for old men like me. What would I do? Surrender, prostrate myself and wait for the changes to take hold? Would I serve the enemy that I’d fought all those years, a thrall sent to conquer new lands and spread their evil further? I’d sooner have died. Those seemed to be the two options.
I sought out Ezabeth. Didn’t explain myself, just took her by her malformed hand and dragged her up the stairs to one of the tavern’s spare rooms. Some of the men cheered, thinking I was planning some soon-to-die desperation sex.
‘What is it?’
‘They just kicked the Iron Goat from his perch,’ I said. I’d run some of the way, my face red and sheened with sweat. ‘Bastards launched a bloody coup!’ I swung a fist at the bed. It was unsatisfyingly springy.
Ezabeth slumped down into a chair. She drew a hand over her eyes.
‘Maybe they have to. The marshal will never surrender, never withdraw from the Range. Even if it costs the lives of every man, woman and child.’
‘Surrender is not an option.’
‘Do we have a choice?’ she said, glancing up at me from behind that mask. ‘I’ve tried, spirits know I’ve tried. But I don’t know how to open the Engine’s heart. I can’t break the wards of the Nameless. Maybe with more time, with the Order’s resources, I might have a chance to work it out … But here, today? Nall’s Engine is nothing but a lie. Maybe it was always a lie.’
I slumped down on the bed, rested my head in my hands. The air was too heavy, too hot around my eyes, too cold in my throat. I felt sick, depleted, sour. I still didn’t have it in me to give up. Not yet.
‘I need answers,’ I said. ‘I need you to help me to get them.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’ Just like that. So assured, so poised, so ready to work. I felt her strength fill some void within me, heavier in my chest than she was in the flesh.
I drew back my sleeve, showed her the raven on my arm. The bird’s talons wrapped the blade of a longsword but it was the raven that glowered with threat.
‘I need to speak with Crowfoot. Can you summon him?’
Ezabeth reached out, pinched at my forearm. She ran her fingers over the scabbed, worn-out skin.
‘Spirits of mercy,’ she said. ‘Why did he do this to you?’
‘A debt I had to pay,’ I said. ‘I need him now. Can you use it to summon him?’
‘This is the magic of the Nameless. It’s nothing like a Spinner’s. I don’t know what I can do.’
‘Can you try?’
She thought about it, fingers tracing along the lines of black ink. Just for a moment I lost myself in the gentle touch of her fingers across my arm. She reached down, adjusted a light canister on her belt.
‘I can try to burn him out of you,’ she said. She hesitated. ‘It will hurt.’
I took my belt off, tied it around my arm like I was fitting a tourniquet and she was about to amputate my limb. Maybe she was.
‘What do I have to lose, right?’ Our eyes met. So much certainty within hers. I almost forgot what we were doing.
Light blazed into my arm. She didn’t wait for me to be ready, didn’t wait for any signal, just got on with the job. It hurt. A lot. Spun moonlight rushed into my flesh, pulled through the canister to her to me, and somehow though my arm shone white and gold I knew that this light had been spun from Clada’s ascendance, blue and cool and soft upon the earth. Nothing soft in it now, not with this intensity. Ezabeth smoked with the light as she forced it into my arm, the energy hissing, and then above it I thought I detected a terrible, bestial snarl.
The raven’s head erupted from my flesh, sticky, black and evil as the night, beady eyes swivelling in all directions. The bird tore itself free as Ezabeth was bowled backwards from her chair by an airless thump of energy. She struck the ground and began convulsing, her small body spasming. I was thrown away too, but the great black bird that tore itself from my arm went straight for her. It landed on her chest, wings spread wide, beak as wide as the gates of hell.
‘WHO DARES?’ it cried in Crowfoot’s terrible snarl.