by R. F. Kuang
Tarcquet barked out a laugh.
Jinzha reddened. “Excuse me?”
“The Ram Warlord thinks he holds all the cards,” Rin said. “So initiate a negotiation. Humiliate yourself, present yourself as weaker than you are, and make him underestimate your forces.”
“That won’t tear down his walls,” said Jinzha.
“But it will make him cocky. How does his behavior change if he’s not anticipating an attack? If he instead thinks you’re running away? Then we have an opening to exploit.” Rin cast about wildly in her head for ideas. “You could get someone behind those walls. Open the gates from the inside.”
“There’s no way you manage that,” Nezha said. “You’d need to get an entire platoon to fight through from the inside, and you can’t hide that many men in one ship.”
“I don’t need an entire platoon,” Rin said.
“No squadron is capable of that.”
She crossed her arms. “I can think of one.”
For once, Jinzha wasn’t looking at her with disdain.
“Who do we send to negotiate with the Ram Warlord, then?” he asked.
Rin and Nezha both answered at once. “Kitay.”
Kitay frowned. “Because I’m a good negotiator?”
“No.” Nezha clapped him on the shoulder. “Because you’ll be a really, really bad one.”
“I was under the impression that I was receiving your grand marshal.” The Ram Warlord lounged casually on his chair, tapping his fingers together as he appraised the Republican delegation with sharp, intelligent eyes.
“You’ll be meeting with me,” Kitay said. He spoke in a perfectly tremulous voice, obviously nervous and pretending not to be. “The Dragon Warlord is indisposed.”
The Republican delegation was deliberately shabby. Kitay was guarded only by two infantry soldiers from the Kingfisher. His life had to seem cheap. Jinzha hadn’t wanted to let Rin come, but she refused to stay behind while Kitay went to face the enemy.
Their delegations had met at a neutral stretch along the shore. The backdrop made the meeting seem more like a competitive fishing match than the site of a war negotiation. This move, Rin assumed, was designed to humiliate Kitay.
The Ram Warlord looked Kitay up and down and pursed his lips. “Vaisra can’t be bothered, so he sends a little puppy to negotiate for him.”
Kitay puffed himself up. “I’m not a puppy. I’m the son of Defense Minister Chen.”
“Yes, I wondered why you looked familiar. You’re a far cry from your old man, aren’t you?”
Kitay cleared his throat. “Jinzha sent me here with proposed terms for a truce.”
“A truce should be settled between leaders. Jinzha does not even afford me the respect that he ought a Warlord.”
“Jinzha has entrusted negotiations to me,” Kitay said stiffly.
The Ram Warlord’s eyes narrowed. “Ah, I understand. Injured then? Or dead?”
“Jinzha is fine.” Kitay let his voice tremble just a bit at the end. “He sends his regards.”
The Ram Warlord leaned forward in his chair, like a wolf examining his prey. “Really.”
Kitay cleared his throat again. “Jinzha instructed me to convey that the truce can only benefit you. We will take the north. It’s up to you to decide whether or not you want to join our forces. If you agree to our terms then we’ll leave Xiashang alone, so long as your men serve in our—”
The Ram Warlord cut him off. “I have no interest in joining Vaisra’s so-called republic. It’s just a ploy to put himself on the throne.”
“That’s paranoid,” Kitay said.
“Does Yin Vaisra seem like a man inclined to share power to you?”
“The Dragon Warlord intends to implement the representative democracy style of government practiced in the west. He knows the provincial system isn’t working—”
“Oh, but it’s working very well for us,” said the Ram Warlord. “The only dissenters are those poor suckers in the south, led by Vaisra himself. The rest of us see a system that’s granted us stability for two decades. There’s no need to disrupt that.”
“But it will be disrupted,” Kitay insisted. “You’ve seen the fault lines yourself. You’re weeks away from going to war with your neighbors over riverways, you have more refugees than you can deal with, and you’ve received no Imperial aid.”
“That, you’re wrong about,” said the Ram Warlord. “The Empress has been exceedingly generous to my province. Meanwhile, your embargo failed, your fields are poisoned, and you’re quickly running out of time.”
Rin shot Kitay a glance. His face betrayed nothing, but she knew, on the inside, he must be gloating.
As they spoke, a single merchant ship drifted toward Xiashang, marked with smugglers’ colors provided to them by Moag. It would claim to have run up from Monkey Province with illegal shipments of grain. Jinzha had packed soldiers into the hold and dressed the few sailors who would remain visible on deck as river traders.
If the Ram Warlord was expecting smuggler ships, then he might very well let it within the city gates.
“There’s a way out here that doesn’t end in your death,” Kitay said.
“Negotiations are a matter of leverage, little boy,” said the Ram Warlord. “And I don’t see your fleet.”
“Maybe your spies should look harder,” Kitay said. “Maybe we’ve hidden it.”
They had hidden it, deep inside a canyon crevice two miles downstream from Xiashang’s gates. Jinzha had sent a smaller fleet of skimmers manned by skeleton crews out toward a different tributary to make it appear that the Dragon Fleet was avoiding Xiashang entirely by sailing east toward Tiger Province instead. They’d done this very conspicuously in broad daylight. The Ram Warlord’s spies had to have seen.
The Ram Warlord shrugged. “Perhaps. Or perhaps you’ve taken the easy route down the Udomsap tributary instead.”
Rin fought to keep her expression neutral.
“The Udomsap isn’t so far from you,” said Kitay. “By river or by ground, you’re lying in Jinzha’s warpath.”
“Bold words from a little boy.” The Ram Warlord snorted.
“A little boy speaking for a great army,” Kitay said. “Sooner or later, we’ll come for you. And then you’ll regret it.”
The blustering was an act, but Rin suspected the frustration in his voice was real. Kitay was playing his part so well that Rin couldn’t help but feel a sudden urge to step in front of him, to protect him. Standing one-on-one before a Warlord, Kitay just looked like a boy: thin, scared, and far too young for his position.
“No. I don’t think we will.” The Ram Warlord reached over and ruffled Kitay’s hair. “I think you’re trapped. That storm hit you harder than you’ll admit. And you don’t have the troops to press on into the winter, and you’re running out of supplies, so you want me to throw open my gates and save your skins. Tell Jinzha he can take his truce and shove it up his butt.” He smiled, displaying teeth. “Run along down the river, now.”
“I admit this might have been a terrible idea,” said Kitay.
Rin’s spyglass was trained on Xiashang’s gates. She had a sick feeling in her stomach. The fleet had been waiting around the bend since dark. The sun had been up for hours. The gates were still closed.
“You don’t think he bought it,” Rin said.
“I was so sure he’d buy it,” said Kitay. “Men like that are so incredibly arrogant that they always need to think that they’ve outsmarted everyone else. But maybe he did.”
Rin didn’t want to entertain that thought.
Another hour passed. No movement. Kitay started walking in circles, chewing at his thumbnail so hard that it bled. “Someone should suggest a retreat.”
Rin lowered her spyglass. “You’d be sentencing my men to death.”
“It’s been half a day,” he said curtly. “Chances are they’re dead already.”
Jinzha, who had been pacing the length of the deck in agitation, motioned toward
them. “It’s time to pursue other options. Those men are gone.”
Rin’s fists tightened. “Don’t you dare—”
“They could have captured them.” Kitay tried to calm her down. “He could be planning to use them as hostages.”
“We don’t have anyone important on that ship,” Jinzha said, which Rin thought was a rather cruel way of describing some of his best soldiers. “And knowing Tsung Ho, he’d just set it on fire.”
The sun crawled to high noon.
Rin fought the creep of despair. The later it got in the day, the worse their chances of storming the walls. They had already lost the element of surprise. The Ram Warlord surely knew they were coming by now, and he’d had half the day to prepare defenses.
But what other choice did the Republic have? The Cike were trapped behind those gates. Any later and their chances of survival dwindled to nothing. Waiting was useless. Escape would be humiliating.
Jinzha seemed to have been thinking the same. “They’re out of time. We attack.”
“That’s what they want, though!” Kitay protested. “This is the battle they want to have.”
“Then we’ll give them that fight.” Jinzha signaled Admiral Molkoi to give the order. For once, Rin was glad that he’d ignored Kitay.
The Republican Fleet surged forward, a symphony of war drums and churning paddle wheels.
Xiashang had prepared well to meet the charge. The Militia went on the offensive immediately. A wave of arrows greeted the Republican Fleet as soon as it crossed into range. For an instant it was impossible to hear anything over the sound of arrows thudding into wood, steel, and flesh. And it didn’t stop. The artillery assault kept coming in wave after wave from archers who seemed to have an endless supply of arrows.
The Republican archers returned fire, but they might have been shooting aimlessly at the sky. The defenders simply ducked down and let the bolts whiz overhead while Republican rockets exploded harmlessly against the massive city walls.
The Kingfisher was safe ensconced within its turtleshell armor, but the other Republican ships had been effectively reduced to sitting ducks. The tower ships floated uselessly in the water. Their trebuchet crews couldn’t launch any missiles—they couldn’t move without fear of being turned into pincushions.
The Lapwing, the Seahawk closest to the walls, sent a double-headed dragon missile screeching through the air only for a Ram archer to shoot it out of the sky. Upon impact it fell sizzling back toward the boat. The Lapwing’s crew scattered before the shower of missiles fell upon their own munitions supply. Rin heard one round of explosions, and then another—a chain reaction that engulfed the Seahawk ship in smoke and fire.
The Shrike, however, had managed to steer its towers to just beside the city gate. Rin squinted at the ship, trying to gauge its distance from the wall. The towers were just tall enough to clear the parapets, but as long as the wall was manned with archers, the tower was useless. Anyone who scaled the siege engine would just be picked off at the top.
Someone had to take those archers out.
Rin glared at the wall, frustrated, cursing the Seal. If she could call the Phoenix she could have just sent a torrent of flame over the barriers, could have cleared it out in under a minute.
But she didn’t have the fire. Which meant she had to get up there herself, and she needed explosives.
She cupped her hands around her mouth. “Ramsa!”
He was crouched ten meters away behind the mast. She screamed his name thrice to no avail. At last she threw a scrap of wood at his shoulder to get his attention.
He yelped. “What the hell?”
“I need a bomb!”
He opened his mouth to respond just as another set of missiles exploded against the turtle boat’s side. He shook his head and gestured frantically at his empty knapsack.
“Anything?” she mouthed.
He dug deep in his pocket, pulled out something round, and rolled it across the floor toward her. She picked it up. A pungent smell hit her nose.
“Is this a shit bomb?” she yelled.
Ramsa waved his hands helplessly. “It’s all I’ve got left!”
It would have to do. She shoved the bomb into her shirt. She’d worry about ignition when she got to the wall. Now she needed some way to climb up to the top. And a shield, something huge, heavy and large enough to cover her entire body . . .
Her eyes landed on the rowboats.
She turned to Kitay. “Pull a boat up.”
“What?”
She pointed to the siege tower. “Get me up in a boat!”
His eyes widened in understanding. He barked a series of orders to the soldiers behind him. They ran out to the mainmast, ducking beneath shields raised over their heads.
Rin jumped into a rowboat with two other soldiers. Kitay directed the men to fasten the ropes at the ends, typically meant to lower the rowboat into the water, onto the mast pulley. The rowboat teetered wildly when they started hoisting it up the mast. It hadn’t been secured well. Halfway up it threatened to flip over until they scrambled to redistribute their weight.
An arrow whistled past Rin’s head. The Ram archers had seen them.
“Hold on!” She twisted the ropes. The rowboat tilted nearly horizontal, a functional full-body shield. Rin crouched down, clinging fast to a seat so she wouldn’t tumble out. A crossbow bolt slid through the bottom of the boat and cut through the arm of the soldier to her left. He screamed and let go. A second later Rin heard him crunch on the deck.
She held her breath. The boat was almost to the top of the wall.
“Get ready.” She bent her knees and rocked the boat so that it would swing forward. Their first swing toward the wall fell short by a yard. Rin caught a brief, dizzying glimpse of the drop beneath her feet.
Another series of arrows studded the rowboat as they swung backward.
Their second swing got them close enough.
“Go!”
They jumped to the wall. Rin slipped on impact. Her knees skidded on solid rock but her feet kicked off into terrifying, empty space. She flung her arms forward and seized a groove cut in the wall. She strained to pull herself up just far enough that she could slam her elbow into the ridge and drag her torso over.
She tumbled gracelessly onto the walkway and staggered to her feet just as a Ram soldier swung a blade at her head. She blocked it with her trident, wrestled it in a circle, sent it spinning uselessly away, and then butted him in the side with the other end. He tumbled down the stairs and smashed into his comrades.
That gave her a temporary reprieve. She scanned the wall of archers. Ramsa’s shit bomb wouldn’t kill them, but it would distract them. She just needed a way to ignite it.
Again she cursed the Seal. She could have just lit it with a snap of her fingers; it would have been so easy.
She cast her eyes about for a lamp, a brazier, something . . . there. Five feet away sat a lump of burning coals in a brass pot. The Ram defenders must have been using it to light their own missiles.
She hefted the bomb in her hands, tossed it toward the pot, and prayed.
She heard a faint, dull pop.
She took a deep breath. Acrid, shit-flavored smoke spilled over the parapets, thick and blinding.
“We’re in trouble,” said the Republican soldier at her left.
She squinted through the smoke at a column of Ram reinforcements approaching fast from the lefthand walkway.
She looked frantically about the wall for a way to get down. She saw a stairwell to her left, but too many soldiers stood crowded at the base. The only other way down was across the other side of the wall, but the walkway didn’t go all the way around—a ridge of wall no thicker than her heel stood between her and the other stairwell.
No time to think. She jumped onto the outer edge of the wall, dug her heels in, and began running before she could teeter to either side. Every few steps she felt her balance jerk horrifically to one side. Somehow she righted herself and kept goi
ng.
She heard the twangs of several bows. Rather than duck, she took a flying leap toward the stairwell. She landed painfully on her side and skidded to a halt. Her shoulder and hip screamed in protest, but her arms and legs still worked. She crawled frantically down the stairs, arrows whizzing over her head.
Behind the gates was a war zone.
She’d stumbled into a crush of bodies, a clamor of steel. Blue uniforms dotted the crowd. Republican soldiers. Relief washed over her. They weren’t dead after all, just late.
“About time!”
Two wonderfully familiar tornadoes of destruction appeared before her. Suni picked up a Ram soldier as if he were a doll, hoisted him over his head, and flung him into the crowd. Baji slammed his rake down into someone’s neck, yanked it up, and twirled it in a circle to knock an incoming arrow out of the air.
“Nice,” Rin said.
He helped her to her feet. “What took you so long?”
Rin opened her mouth to respond just as someone tried to grapple her from behind. She jammed her elbow back by instinct and felt the rewarding crunch of a shattering nose. Her assailant’s grip loosened. She struggled free. “We were waiting for your signal!”
“We gave a signal! Sent a flare up ten minutes ago! Where’s the fucking army?”
Rin pointed to the wall. “There.”
A thud shook Xiashang’s gates. The Shrike had landed its siege tower.
Republican soldiers funneled over the wall like a swarm of ants. Bodies hurtled to the ground like tumbling bricks, while grappling hooks flew into the sky and embedded themselves at regular intervals along the wall.
She saw almost as many blue uniforms as green ones now. Slowly the press of Republican soldiers expanded through the center square.
“Get to the gates,” Rin told Baji.
“Way ahead of you.” Baji scattered the throng of soldiers guarding one suspension wheel with a well-aimed swing of his rake. Suni took the other wheel. Together they dug their heels into the ground and pushed. Republican soldiers formed a protective circle around them, fending off the press of defenders.
“Push!” someone screamed.