by Col Buchanan
Shard. It didn’t have to end that way you know. We could have left the oasis together, all of us.
As murderers. As thieves in the night.
As a family.
Stunning, the things he could say to her even now. Playing with her mind, she knew, just as she was playing with his. As they had been speaking, Shard had pumped her lungs full of hot air before holding her breath. Now, she allowed the flames to creep into the vortex once again, feigning a weakening of her power. Sensing it, spurred on by hope, Seech put every last effort into finishing her.
He was so focused right then that he failed to notice the block suddenly dropping straight down on top of his head, at least not until the last moment, glancing upwards, and then it crashed onto him and he was lost beneath it, gone from the bird’s line of sight.
Shard! came the faint echo of his voice, and then the flames instantly vanished around her. Fresh air flooded back into her lungs.
Shard sagged to the ground with a growl.
*
‘We’ve lost the wall,’ General Tanserine was shouting at him, having come to him at last. ‘Marsalas! We must sound the retreat!’
But Creed shoved the old veteran of the Shield out of his face, then pushed his way clear of his circle of guards to take in the breadth of the action, oblivious to the defenders beside him fighting tooth and claw to hold the battlements.
There were breaches on both sides of their immediate position now. Dark earth and rubble half-choked each one, but their tongues fell out onto the open ground before and behind the wall, so that they formed ramps for the enemy to rush across them in their roaring thousands, tiny figures struggling over the debris with Mannian flags streaming behind them. Warheads glittered in the darkness down there where they ran head on into the squares of chartassa.
Occasionally the pinprick figure of a man would fall where Creed was looking, yet his eyes roamed onwards to the rampart that was their fall-back position, Xeno’s Wall – where the second line of defenders stood watching on helplessly.
‘Marsalas!’
The Lord Protector tottered on the edge of the parapet with his balance shifting around him, his body still weak for all he was demanding of it. He leaned against the hard stone for support, the wall holding him up on his feet. If only he could return the favour.
Shouts of alarm on the nearest steps; Acolytes trying to fight their way up to the top.
‘Marsalas, they’ve enveloped us!’
In brooding silence Creed appraised their sudden, drastic change of situation, shedding any illusions of hope for cold reality instead. He stood in an eye of a storm in the huddle of men surrounding him, letting it all sink down into his stomach, where his best judgements were always made at times like these.
To lose another wall, so quickly after the last one.
‘Marsalas, we must do it now!’ General Tanserine shouted again. ‘We need time if we are to open the flood defences.’
Creed could smell the reek of the men’s fear in the frigid air, floating off them in waves of vapour. His bodyguards shifted uneasily. General Tanserine looked old for all his thirty-two years.
‘He’s right,’ snapped Halahan, and his hard stare forced Creed to listen. ‘If we pull back now in good order, we can save most of these men.’
The leader of the Greyjackets knew all to well what it was like when a wall fell suddenly. They all knew.
The rout, the mad desperate scramble of it, the unfolding massacre. Wounded men left where they had fallen. Their screams as the Mannians made sport of them sounding long into the night.
But Creed was thinking of what Tanserine had said. The flood defences behind the wall. They would never have a better chance of taking out so many of the enemy, not in one fell swoop.
Once more he looked to his signaller standing there waiting with her flags and horns. ‘Sound the retreat,’ he said even as the words tried to strangle him to silence.
‘General?’ she asked him, not certain if she had heard him correctly.
‘Sound the bloody retreat, and quickly now!’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Run to Ground
Two flares rose up into the night sky burning green and bright, not far to the south-west of their position on the warwagon.
It was a signal from the Rōshun, telling him they had safely reached the tunnel with the others, the tunnel which would bring them back beneath the Shield.
‘They made it,’ said Ash with relief, crouched down next to General Mokabi, who sat on the floor with his hands behind his back, eyes glaring above his gag.
Baracha stood at the top of the steps where he had thrown the hatch across before bolting it shut, the chops of an axe sounding through its wood now. ‘I think they plan to storm us. Any thoughts on how we get out of this?’
Nothing had come to Ash yet. They were surrounded up here on the high deck of the wheeled fort. A skyship circled far above, maintaining its distance for now. Light cavalry roamed on the ground where snipers were hunkered down in cover. The warwagon was trapped from behind by barricades sealing the ruins of an old fallen wall. Ahead, more ruins led to the Khosian defences, swarming with tens of thousands of the enemy.
‘I think we should get this thing rolling,’ the big man suggested again, and Ash suspected it was only because he liked the sheer scale involved in the idea, this huge wagon rolling through the enemy ranks. Though now that he thought it over, so did Ash.
‘Head deeper into the ruins of the Shield, you mean?’
‘Why not? Can’t be any worse than here.’
Blind optimism was hardly Baracha’s style. Ash suspected it was only for his own benefit, and he realized then how poorly he must appear to Baracha, an old bloodied farlander crouched there breathing raggedly.
‘Either way, time to finish him,’ the Alhazii declared as he looked to Mokabi, and drew a wicked blade from his belt. ‘Before we lose the chance to.’
Mokabi had been still ever since hearing they were Rōshun, consigning what time he had left to containing his fears. Now, though, he struggled at the sight of the man approaching with the knife. He shouted through his gag and speared Ash with panicked eyes, breathing so fast through his nostrils that snot flew from them and his face turned red, the man choking.
Ash tugged down the gag then slapped the general hard across the face, stunning him to silence.
‘You have something to say to us?’
‘We had a deal!’
‘Aye, that I would not shoot you.’
Mokabi glanced up wide-eyed at Baracha’s blade.
‘I can make you both rich,’ the man panted, his beard glistening with perspiration. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
Baracha towered over him, death from above. ‘No one asked you to come here and wage war on these people,’ snarled the Alhazii. ‘You reap what you sow.’
‘Wait!’
‘What is it?’ snapped Ash.
‘It isn’t meant to end like this,’ Mokabi exclaimed with a passion. ‘Not now!’
Ash snorted. Baracha rolled his eyes. The hubris of the conqueror.
‘Make it quick,’ Ash said as he stood, holding Mokabi’s glistening stare. But his companion was looking off to the north just then, his attention caught by something else entirely.
Horns were blaring from the distant rampart under attack, which Ash could just see over the low rubble of a previously fallen wall; high wails of alarm calling through the din of the battle.
‘They’re falling back from Singer’s Wall,’ realized Ash. ‘Those are horns of retreat.’
‘So?’
‘If the Khosians are falling back there must be a breach in the defences. A place for us to get through.’
‘Ah!’
Quickly Baracha strode to the front of the deck and climbed up onto the driver’s cupola, partly covered by a weather canopy. As he gathered the heavy reins in his single hand he shouted down to the enemy forces surrounding them below.
‘Any
of you sons of bitches take a shot at me, your beloved general is dead, you hear?’
In the ensuing silence the Alhazii flicked the barbed reins across the backs of the first pair of harnessed mammoots. There were six of them in all, chewing on great mounds of shorn grass while they waited. ‘Yah!’ he shouted, and one of the shaggy-haired creatures flicked its tail, but neither moved.
‘Ash. Throw me a pistol there.’
He spotted one lying next to a slain Mannian officer. Checked that it was loaded and tossed it across to his companion. Baracha turned back with it pointed in his hand, aimed along the barrel then fired it squarely into the rump of one of the lead mammoots.
At once the creature reared up with a trumpeting roar from its trunk and pulled against the harness, prompting the others to do the same until the wagon was slowly creaking forwards on its man-sized wheels. The whole thing started to shudder.
A shot sped in from the darkness, tearing a hole through the canopy by Baracha’s head.
‘What did I say, you son of a bitch? What did I tell you?’
Another shot whipped past him, and then gunfire was erupting all around them, dissecting the air above the deck and forcing Baracha to duck low in his seat. ‘Go!’ Ash shouted from behind a crenellation. ‘Go!’
‘Yah!’ Baracha yelled again with another heave of the barbed reins across their backs, and this time the animals responded by picking up speed, the warwagon rocking now from side to side along a paved road which it filled entirely, scattering men out of its way as it headed for the ruins of the Shield.
*
Ash swayed unsteadily as he made his way towards the driver’s seat. An axehead was splintering through the hatchway covering the steps, and he paused to haul a table onto it, and then as an afterthought some heavy corpses too. The deck was rolling crazily now. He glanced up over the side, saw that the mammoots had built up enough momentum to enter into a run, pulling the wagon along the road at a terrific clip, the huge rolling fort creaking and rattling as though it was about to shake apart. Voices rose up through the decking loud and frantic, people jostled about down there. Glass crashed to pieces.
‘Anyone following?’ Baracha asked with a grin when Ash dropped into the bouncing seat next to him.
‘A skyship. Some cavalry.’
Soldiers on the road ahead were scattering out of their way. The ruins of a wall were rushing towards them, the road leading through it via a levelled gap. The wheels bounced going over and then they were through and into the old killing field beyond, filled with tents and great crowds of soldiers. He spotted the breached remains of another wall far ahead, and then he was gripping his seat as the wagon veered off the road out onto the frozen ground, Baracha manoeuvring around a line of smaller wagons with hard tugs of the reins.
Startled faces flashed below them in the night. Screams as the team of mammoots charged through tents and camp fires like a sudden hurricane, trampling anyone caught in their way. A sound rose to Ash’s ears, a low rumble of snaps and cracks; rocks exploding into dust beneath their iron-clad wheels.
They were through the next line of ruins in a flash of passing masonry. General Mokabi was on his feet back there, leaning against the rear crenellations and shouting out to their pursuers. Ash rose and staggered across the deck to him with his naked sword in his grip. Somehow Mokabi sensed his approach and spun around, hands still bound behind his back.
‘Come to finish me?’ the general shouted, spitting white froth from his lips, incensed by this mistreatment. ‘We had a deal! You swore on it!’
‘Jump,’ Ash commanded, pointing the tip of the blade at Mokabi’s throat, and Mokabi faltered back a step, pressing against the wooden crenellations. Ash stepped forwards to push the steel against the man’s skin, pricking it, and Mokabi leaned back even further, out over the rear of the wagon.
His eyes flashed down at the road in panic, a good thirty feet below them.
‘Jump and take your chances,’ Ash said again. ‘Or I kill you myself.’
There was hatred in Mokabi’s eyes now. They were so intent upon each other that neither noticed the wagon bouncing through a gap in a ruined wall.
‘You think this will change anything?’ spat the general into his face. ‘You think it will stop the Empire from taking the Free Ports? You fool. You bloody fools all of you. The creed of Mann will still—’
‘Jump!’ Ash commanded with all the projected will his voice could muster, and Mokabi flinched back just as the wagon jolted violently, tipping him over the edge.
He screamed, his body vanishing over the side and his legs following, and Ash looked down to see the general crashing to the ground head first, where he lay there unmoving in a heap.
‘Is it done?’ Baracha wanted to know when Ash returned to the driving seat.
‘Aye.’
Ash’s heart pounded within his ribs. His gaze was struck by the great rampart they were bouncing towards, Singer’s Wall, foremost surviving wall in the Shield – though by the looks of things no longer.
Several breaches stood along the cliff of stone like the gaps of missing teeth, where Mannian forces were surging through like a rising tide. Between there and the wagon, tens of thousands of fighters swarmed across the vast killing ground, parting before the roaring team of mammoots.
They passed a siege tower burning there on the field, men jumping from its heights; a pair of panicking war mammoots thrashing about with their curved tusks. Corpses lay scattered across the ground, crunching beneath the wheels like the many rocks, and growing in numbers as they neared the wall. Ash finally spotted the breach that Baracha was heading for. In a flash of an explosion he saw the ramp of rubble that led up to it, jagged and uneven.
‘This wagon will never make it over that breach,’ he offered.
‘Oh, you heathens of little faith,’ replied Baracha, and with a thrash of the reins drove the team towards it, towards the tongue of earth covered in swarms of charging men, many of them looking back now at the approaching thunder of the warwagon.
Barely slowing, the six mammoots charged onto the gentle slope of earth pulling the mighty wagon behind them. Its deck pitched upwards, pressing Ash and Baracha back against the seat, the Alhazii whipping hard with his reins, the wheels jolting over the loose earth and rocks. Upwards they climbed through a breach filled with thousands of running figures – startled faces in the moonlight – cutting a path through them like the bow wave of a ship, while the wall’s great height rose raggedly on either side like a canyon.
He was holding on for dear life as they made it to the top of the ramp where it levelled off, the wound in his side spilling freely again.
‘Never make it, you say!’ Baracha shouted wildly, even as the wagon pitched from side to side right on the very limits of toppling over.
But Ash was already thinking ahead, trying to squint at the killing ground beyond lit brightly by falling flares. He could make out masses of the city’s defenders rushing back to the safety of the next wall, pursued by an ocean of baying enemy forces. It was a rout.
Faster, Baracha whipped the trumpeting mammoots onwards with the wagon rumbling down the other side of the breach, both of them gripping the sides of their seats with their boots braced against the footrest. On the uneven slope the wagon lurched sharply to one side and Ash and Baracha exchanged panicked grins. The wagon pitched further, its great mass tilting onto its side, until Ash felt a lurch in his stomach as it toppled over.
He was flung clear from the seat with his arms and legs wheeling through the air. Tucked himself into a ball just as he crashed amongst a cluster of men and bowled through them, hitting the slope of earth and rocks before rolling down it in a cloud of choking dust.
Bruised and winded, he lay there for a moment regaining his senses, surprised that no bones were broken.
Get up. Get up, you old fool!
Ash gasped for air and ignored the flares of pain as he staggered up onto one knee. Men were running past without paying him any
notice, keen to join in the pursuit of the fleeing defenders. He tried calling out to Baracha, but he had no breath to lend to his voice. He rose to his feet and staggered towards a still form lying on the ground not far from him. Found that it was indeed Baracha, lying there dazed and with blood smearing his face and head.
‘Can you move?’
Baracha blinked up at the night sky.
‘I think so.’
‘Come on, then,’ Ash gasped, and draped an arm over his shoulder and helped the Alhazii to his feet. Baracha hissed, hopping on one foot, the other leg dangling broken.
‘Busted some ribs too, I think,’ growled the man, clutching his side. Blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth. Ash hid his concern.
Together they shambled down the rest of the ramp and out across the open field, Baracha hopping as best he could with Ash’s support, two figures in a sea of thousands. Baracha was even heavier than he looked.
‘We almost made it,’ the Alhazii gasped.
‘You did not have to stay with me.’
‘What, and let you steal all the glory?’
‘Save your breath. We can still do this.’
But just then Ash glanced up over his shoulder and saw the skyship still following overhead. A beam of pale light shone from the lens of a mirrored search lantern, pointing down at where they stumbled.
It was like the Isles of Sky all over again, pursued by a flying craft with stabbing lights betraying his location.
He felt the shudder of hoof-beats behind before he heard them. Looked back to see two Acolyte riders coming in at them with their swords drawn.
Yes. We almost made it.
‘Do what you can,’ he said to Baracha, and released the big Alhazii so he could draw his sword from the sheath on his back.
Ash ducked a swinging blade then sliced through one of their sides as the fellow flashed past him. He turned for the other rider, just in time to see Baracha still somehow on his feet and punching the zel hard across the head, knocking it out cold so that its rider toppled to the earth with a crash. Baracha fell on the sprawling man and broke his neck with a vicious twist.