"No. I need all the manpower I can get for practise at conventional drill, for arms making, and for strengthening the masonry."
"But, sir, His Majesty was quite positive—"
The colonel gave Jorian a sharp look. "Meseems that, to listen to you, His Majesty has been taking an entirely unwonted interest in the details of the defense—something he has never done hitherto. Did he give you such a message just now, from his own mouth?"
"Certes. You do not think I would give you orders on my own responsibility, do you?"
"On the contrary, that is just what I think. Know, good my sir, that I command the defense and none other—let alone foreign interlopers. If you would convince me that His Majesty has in sooth issued this silly command, you must bring me a written order in his own hand, or else persuade him to issue his dicta to me in person."
"Would you rather let the enemy in than yield on a bit of protocol?" said Jorian angrily. "If I must needs run back and forth all day bearing bits of paper—"
"Get out of here!" shouted Chuivir. "Any royal commands hereafter shall be in writing, or I will ignore them. Now off with you and stop pestering me, or I will have you arrested!"
"We shall see," growled Jorian. He left the tower fuming.
That evening over supper, he told Karadur of the day's events.
"When I got back to the palace," he said, "I found the King just waking up. I told him about the quarreling between the factions and about my troubles with Chuivir. I said I feared my supervision would come to nought unless I had direct and acknowledged command of the whole defense, with none to gainsay me. Even then, 'twould be a chancy thing.
"I told Ishbahar I wanted nothing less than commanding the defense of Iraz, which was not my city; but I was caught therein and stood to fall therewith. Hence, to save my own hide, I needs must do what I could to save it."
"Did he believe your—ah—protestations of virtue?"
"I know not, albeit they expressed my true sentiments. He flat refused, howsomever, to oust Chuivir and the stasiarchs and appoint me in their room, saying 'twere politically impossible.
"At length he summoned the three and me to tea this afternoon. Another gorge, naturally. If His Majesty keep on stuffing me like a sausage skin, I shall have to go on a fast; I've already gained ten pounds in Iraz.
"Well, at table, Amazluek, with a bandage round his head, glared daggers at Vegh and me. But I will say old Fatty did his best. He homilized us on the need for cooperation whilst the siege lasted. An we failed to work together, he reminded us, we should be tied to posts, tarred, and kindled to illumine the Fedirunis' victory feast. The desert dwellers have quaint notions of entreating their captives. At the end, he was blubbering great tears of self-pity and had even my three recalcitrant commanders looking solemn and wiping their eyes."
"Did he confirm your tale of having obtained the order about the crutches from him?"
"Aye; luckily, I had thought to prime him on this little white lie. So we all parted with expressions, if not of good will, at least of promises to work for the common goal. But nought has really been changed, and the morrow will doubtless see us at one another's throats again."
"How about those crutches?"
"Seeing a chance to score off his rival, Amazluek said he'd be responsible for them. His faction, he said, had many competent woodworkers, and he would set them to sawing and nailing night and day. Then Vegh said his Pants could make two crutches for every one turned out by the Kilts. The king said to go to it."
Karadur: "My son, I promised Nedef to look in at his sanctum this even. He is attempting to spy on a meeting of the hostile commanders, to learn what he can of their plans. Wilt—ah—accompany me? With all in confusion and arms handed out broadcast, the streets are none too safe o' nights."
"Surely, old man. Have you a lanthorn?"
Nedef murmured: "Nay, I see no gathering around the tent of the Fediruni chieftain… That leaves the Algarthians…"
For some minutes, the scryer sat silently with an intense expression, as he strove to guide the vision in the crystal seaward.
"It is easier this even," he said. "Belike all the wizards are at meat. Ah, here is the pirates' flagship, with longboats clustering about her. The council of war must be aboard…" Then more silence. Nedef gasped: "Aid me, Doctor Karadur! The wizards have cast a protective spell about the admiral's cabin, so I cannot enter it."
Karadur mumbled and made passes. At last Nedef exclaimed: "Ah, now I am in! But it takes all my strength to remain…"
"What see you?" asked Jorian.
"In sooth, it is a veritable council of war. I see Mazsan the factionist, and the pirate admiral—I think his name is Hrundikar, a great huge wight with a long red beard. I also see the leaders of the Free Company and of the nomads, whose names I know not."
"What do they?"
"They talk, with much gesticulation and pauses for the interpreters… Mazsan says something about making an attack from all four sides at once, to stretch the defense thin…"
Silence, then: "They argue the question of timing their attack. The Fediruni points heavenward; he—I cannot read his lips, for he speaks his native tongue. Ah, the interpreter asks how they can time their attacks with the sun hidden by clouds…
"Now Mazsan speaks. He says something about the Tower of Kumashar… He holds a spyglass to his eye. The Fediruni asks a question,
but I cannot catch it… Mazsan demands something of Admiral Hrundikar. Everybody takes a drink… Now a sailor brings in a sheet of something—parchment or paper. They spike it to the bulkhead; each of the four chieftains drives his dagger through one corner of the sheet. With a piece of charcoal, Mazsan draws a two-foot circle on the sheet. He marks a spot in the center. He makes a set of marks around the edge of the circle. He draws an arrow, starting at the center and pointing to one of the marks…"
"Which mark? Which mark?" demanded Jorian.
"It is on the right-hand side of the circle… My vision is blurred."
"If it were a clock, what time would it tell?"
"Ah, I see! The clock hand points to the third hour. Now the scene grows wavery, as if their wizards had returned to their task…"
Nedef's voice trailed off. The scryer slumped in a faint and rolled off his bench to the floor.
"Dear me, I hope he have not damaged his brain," said Karadur. "That is a hazard of his profession."
"His pulse seems normal," said Jorian, bending over the fallen man. "So now we know: the foe will attack at the third hour of the morning —or the Hour of the Otter, as we say in Novaria. They will time their assault by watching the Tower of Kumashar through telescopes."
"We know not the day of the attack," said Karadur.
"True, but we had better assume it to be tomorrow. I must get word to the king and the commanders."
"I cannot leave poor Nedef in a swoon…"
'Take care of him, then, whilst I go about my business, which brooks no delay."
"Go you first to the king?"
"Nay, I think I'll drop in first on Chuivir to pass the news."
"What chance have we, with a few hundred guardsmen against their tens of thousands?"
"The chance of a pollywog in a pond full of pike. But the militia can push over ladders if nought else. Still, 'tis a muchel of city wall to cover with a small force. All they need is one good foothold…"
"I suppose we could stop the clocks in the Tower of Kumashar. Then they would lack means of coordinating their attack."
Jorian stared. "You're right, old man. But, by Heryx's iron yard, you've given me an even better idea! Each of the four parties plans to attack a different side and use a different one of the four clocks, does it not?"
"I suppose so."
"All right, you succor Master Nedef; I'm off."
When he had reported to the king, who was eating a late evening snack, Ishbahar asked the same question that Karadur had already posed: "What chance have we, lad, with their twenty or thirty thousand aga
inst our four hundred-odd guardsmen and a few thousand militiamen?"
"Not much, Your Majesty," said Jorian. "I do, howsomever, have an idea that may well throw their attack into confusion."
"What is it?"
"Ere I tell Your Majesty, your servant would like to beg a boon, in case my scheme work."
"Anything, my boy, anything! If it work not, none of us will have further use for material possessions anyway. An we defeat this siege, we have plans for you."
"All I ask, sire, is your copper bathtub."
"The gods bless our soul, what an extraordinary request! No cartload of gold? No high office? No noble maiden for your harem?"
"Nay, sire; I meant just what I said."
"Of course you shall have it, win or lose. But what is your scheme?"
Jorian told him.
Chapter Eight
THE BARBARIAN SAVIOR
THE OVERCAST SKY PALED TO PEARLY GRAY, JORIAN told Colonel Chuivir: "The Fedirunis will attack the East Wall first, in about half an hour."
"How in the name of Ughroluk do you know?"
"Because at that time, the east clock will show the third hour."
"But will not the other clocks show the same—oh!" Chuivir stared round-eyed at Jorian. "You mean you have set them all to show different times!"
Jorian nodded, and Chuivir gave a command. Messengers departed on a run. Soon, nearly all the Royal Guard was assembled along the East Wall, with their armor gleaming dully in the gray light. Mingled with them were several companies of militia. Most of the militiamen bore either crutches or spears to whose buttends short crosspieces had been affixed. When all were in place, there was a man for every six feet of wall. A skeleton guard of militia was left on the other walls.
From the swarming, dun-colored camp of the Fedirunis, ram's horns gave their soft bleat. A flood of figures, robed in brown, sand color, and dirty white, poured out from the tent city and streamed towards the East Wall. They covered the earth like a swarm of ants. Foremost among them came hundreds of pairs of men, each pair carrying a ladder. Others gathered in knots and unlimbered the powerful, double-curved compound horn bows of Fedirun.
"Keep your heads down!" shouted Chuivir. The command was passed down the line.
The Fediruni bows twanged, and sheets of arrows shrieked up from their line. Some shafts soared over the battlements; others struck the stones and rebounded. A few struck home. Cries arose along the line of the defenders, and the physicians of Iraz ran up and down with their gowns flapping, seeking the wounded.
The swarm of foes flowed up to the wall. All along the line, hundreds of ladders were planted in the ground. Their other ends rose like the booms of cranes as the attackers pushed on them from behind with hands and spear points.
"Loose!" cried Chuivir.
All along the wall, arbalesters of the Royal Guard stepped out from behind their merlons to discharge their crossbows into the crowd below. Then they ducked back again to reload. Elsewhere, squads of militiamen placed boxes of heavy stones and cauldrons of boiling oil, molten lead, and red-hot sand in the embrasures and tipped them until the contents poured down on the heads beneath. Screams resounded.
Still the ladders rose until their upper ends, even with the top of the wall, came to rest.
"Wait until they are loaded, Colonel," said Jorian.
"Curse it, stop telling me how to run my business!" snapped Chuivir. "I was going to do just that." He raised his voice: "Crutch men, wait for the signal! How far up are they, Captain Jorian?"
Jorian risked a peek out an embrasure. "Three man-heights. Give them a little more… Now!"
As the heads of the most active climbers approached the top of the wall, the Fediruni archers ceased shooting for fear of hitting their own. Chuivir shouted: "O-o-over!"
All along the wall, militiamen hooked their crutches into the tops of the ladders and pushed. Here and there a man fell to a Fediruni arrow, but another took his place. The ladders swayed outward and fell, dropping their shrieking burdens into the crowd.
The Fediruni leaders dashed up and down, screaming commands and exhortations. Up went the ladders again. Again, swarms of brown-robed figures scrambled up them.
Jorian found himself next to an embrasure in front of which an Irazi militiaman had fallen with an arrow through his throat. The top of a ladder showed in the gap between the merlons. Before Jorian could gather his wits, a black-bearded brown face, surmounted by a white head cloth held in place by a camel's-hair rope, popped into the embrasure. Golden hoops hung gleaming and swaying from the man's ear lobes.
Jorian snatched up the crutch that the fallen Irazi had dropped. His first attempt to place it against one of the uprights of the ladder miscarried; he missed and almost hurled himself through the embrasure. Before he could recover and replace the implement, the Fediruni leaped like a cat through the embrasure and had at him with a scimitar.
Jorian threw up the crutch to parry a whistling cut, which drove into the wood and nearly severed the crutch. He struck at the man, but the crutch broke at its weakened point. The man slashed again; his blade clashed against Jorian's mail as Jorian leaped back.
By the time the man drew back his arm for a third blow, Jorian had his sword out. A straight thrust took the unarmored man in the ribs. The Fediruni still had the strength to complete his cut, which clanged on Jorian's helmet, knocking it down over his eyes and filling his head with stars.
Jorian pushed his helmet back into place, to see the Fediruni leaning against the merlon. The scimitar dropped from his lax fingers as the man slowly sagged to the pavement.
Meanwhile, another Fediruni had hoisted himself through the embrasure. This man carried both a scimitar and a leathern buckler in his right hand. Over his brown robe he wore a crude cuirass of boiled leather, painted red and blue, and on his head a light steel cap with a slender spike on top. As he came, he shifted the buckler to his left hand and engaged Jorian. There was a quick exchange of cuts and thrusts; the man was a skilled fighter.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jorian saw a third Fediruni, with his shaven skull bare, climbing through. If the third man gained the wall and assailed him from behind, Jorian knew he would have little chance. Despite the hero tales, it was rare indeed that a single swordsman could defeat two competent foes at once. If Jorian took his attention for a heartbeat off the man he was fighting, the fellow would instantly have him.
He tried to speed up his cuts and lunges to kill the man before the other came. But the man caught the blows on his buckler and sent back one whistling counter-cut after another…
The third man had reached the wall and slithered around behind Jorian, who knew what was happening but could do nothing to stop it. Then a shriek arose behind him, and the sound of a falling body. The eyes of the man he was fighting shifted past him, and in an instant Jorian ran him through the throat.
"Here is another!" cried Chuivir, drawing a bloody sword from the Fediruni behind Jorian. "Help me!"
The colonel referred to a fourth Fediruni, now poised on the topmost rung of the ladder with a scimitar in his teeth. Jorian and Chuivir each drove the point of his sword into one of the two uprights.
"Over!" said Chuivir.
They shoved. The ladder swayed out. It seemed to stand balanced for an incredible time, while the topmost Fediruni looked down with eyes that widened with terror in his swarthy face. The last sight that Jorian had of him, as the ladder toppled, was of the man's opening his mouth to scream and dropping the sword he had held in his teeth.
"That was close," said Chuivir. "They have gained another foothold yonder; come along!"
The two rushed along the wall to where several Fedirunis had formed a solid knot with their backs to an embrasure, while others, climbing up the ladder from behind, tried to push in.
"Watch!" said Jorian.
He put a foot on the adjacent embrasure and hurled himself up on top of the merlon. A small, slender Fediruni was just pushing through the embrasure behind the kno
t of battlers. At the moment, he was on hands and knees in the embrasure.
Jorian swung up his arm and brought his sword down in a long, full-armed cut. He had the satisfaction of seeing the man's head fly off, to roll among the trampling feet of the fighters. The blood-spouting body collapsed in the embrasure, and through Jorian's mind flitted a fleeting thought of wonder that so small a man should contain so much blood. A scarlet pool spread out on the flagstones, so that the fighters slipped and staggered in it.
The body hindered the next climber, who pushed and tugged at it to clear it out of the way. While he was so engaged, Jorian caught him in the face with a backhand cut. The man fell off the ladder, carrying away those below him in a whole concatenation of screams and crashes.
"Hand me a crutch!" Jorian shouted.
A spear was at length passed up to him. With this he pried one of the uprights of the ladder away from the stone and sent it toppling. The Fedirunis on the wall, cut off from support and slipping and falling in the puddles of blood, were soon beaten down and hacked to pieces.
Panting, Jorian, in dented helm and rent hauberk, confronted Colonel Chuivir, around whose left arm a physician was tying a bandage. Below, the Fedirunis sullenly flowed back towards their tent city. They carried many of their wounded; but many more were left behind, along with hundreds of corpses.
"Bad?" said Jorian.
"Scratch. You?"
"Never touched me. Thank you for your help."
"No trouble. When and whence is the next attack?" asked Chuivir.
"Soon, north. The north clock is set an hour after the east."
"The Free Company, eh?"
"Aye. Not many, but fell fighters."
"With that armor, they will not be able to climb so monkeylike. Adjutant, everybody but the skeleton guard to the North Wall!"
An hour later, the Free Company withdrew from the North Wall, leaving scores of armored figures lying like smashed beetles at its base. Jorian, bleeding from a cut on the side of his jaw, told Chuivir: "The pirates next."
The houses that had been illegally built against the West Wall, facing the waterfront, furnished the pirates with an easy means of getting halfway up the wall. They made several lodgments on the top of the wall and clung to them despite the hardest fighting; Jorian took another light wound, on his right arm. But the houses, being inflammable, soon blazed up under a shower of incendiary missiles from the wall. Pirates struggling to emplace short ladders on the roofs of the houses were engulfed in flames and died screaming.
The Clocks of Iraz Page 13