The World Raven

by A. J. Smith

  Nanon and Keisha remained at the end of the corridor, shielding their eyes from the sudden light, while the creature scratched next to the furthest vault.

  ‘Footprints,’ said Keisha, pointing at disturbances in the dust. ‘People come down here. One person at least.’

  The still air was sliced through by an eruption of insane laughter. As one, Nanon and Keisha drew their weapons and crouched. The laughter continued, cracking and breaking until the female voice was hoarse. The creature was looking at something in the furthest vault, something it wanted to show them. Nanon sheathed his longsword and smiled, realizing how foolish he’d been.

  ‘Your father didn’t kill all of them,’ he said. ‘She may wish it so, but the Mistress of Pain is not the last of the Seven Sisters.’

  They joined the Aberration, getting as close as they had when they left the wine cellar. In the last vault, chained to the wall, was a woman draped in rags. The tattoo of a coiled snake was just visible on her cheek. Nanon had seen it before, when she’d inched Rham Jas in Ro Leith.

  ‘Isabel the Seductress,’ he said, with a shallow bow. ‘You are less well-attired than when last we met.’

  The enchantress had no mind. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and the only things coming from her mouth were insane laughter and drool. Her sister had raped her mind and used it to protect herself. Nanon had been unable to find Saara because she now possessed the power of all her dead sisters, and was using the remaining one to store her thralls. She was more powerful than any enchantress who had gone before her and believed herself untouchable.

  ‘Can I kill this woman?’ asked Keisha, still holding her father’s katana.

  He nodded. ‘You can. And doing so will allow you to kill the Mistress of Pain.’ He turned to the Aberration. ‘She’s your equal. A Tyrant in the Lands of the Twisted Tree. That’s why you can’t kill her. You need us to do it for you.’

  The creature backed away until it was half in darkness. Keisha followed its movements, the katana resting across her shoulders.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  Its mouth puckered and spat, forming deep grunts and elongated syllables. The noises rose and fell in pitch and volume, until recognizable words formed. ‘I will never harm you, daughter,’ growled the Aberration. ‘You will be welcome in the Tyranny of Arnon.’ Then it was gone, melting silently into the shadows to spread the will of Shub-Nillurath to the lands of men.

  ‘Until we meet again,’ muttered Nanon.

  They were both silent for a moment, processing what they’d seen. A friend and a father had a new life, but a life devoted to their enemy. In the years to come, the Aberration would be at the front of his mind, but now, in the vaults of Ro Weir, there was an enchantress to kill.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asked Keisha. ‘When it’s done, we’ll have to move quickly. I should be able to sense the Mistress of Pain and we’ll need to get to her.’

  Her eyes were distant, but there was a focus that he had not seen before. She still looked at the darkness where the creature had disappeared, but she did not cry and her hands did not shake. ‘I’m ready,’ she replied, turning and pointing her katana at Isabel the Seductress.

  CHAPTER 25

  HALLA SUMMER WOLF IN THE CITY OF TIERGARTEN

  SHE HAD THREE new wounds. A long nick to her left cheek, a deep cut across the back of her right hand and an irritating, but shallow, puncture wound in her lower back. She’d been blindsided when the siege towers first dropped their drawbridges and had missed the glaive-wielder behind her. Only a thrown axe from Rexel Falling Cloud had stopped the wound being fatal. As it was, exhaustion was proving a bigger problem than blood. They had committed every warrior and sprung every surprise to defend the walls of Tiergarten. Only Alahan’s mysterious company had yet to be used, and she was sceptical about the newly confident young thain’s plan.

  Unrahgahr and his family were gone, pursuing the trees north, and could not be relied on to return. Rorg and the Low Kasters were a nice surprise, but they were now within the walls and had lost too many men to be used again in such a fashion. When Rulag came again – and he would come again – it would just be steel on steel. Unless the two hundred old men in the vault were as mighty as Alahan and Crowe believed.

  ‘Halla,’ said Rexel, cleaning his hand-axes. ‘Look at that.’

  He pointed at the furthest siege tower. It was slowly falling away from the walls, as fire turned the wood to ashen planks. A small figure crouched on the battlements before it, gazing down into the city. Halla’s battle brothers stopped in surprise at the small person, pausing in the grim task of throwing dead bodies back over the wall.

  Alahan was below, directing men wheeling carts across the exposed gateway, and he seemed to be the focus of the small figure.

  ‘That’s a girl,’ said Halla.

  ‘I didn’t think even the bastard of Jarvik would use children in war,’ replied Falling Cloud. ‘But he has fewer warriors than we thought; maybe he had no choice.’

  ‘You, girl,’ shouted Halla, pointing across the battlements at the small figure. ‘Stay there.’

  The girl stood up and froze in place, standing amidst bloodied men and cleaved bodies. The dim light around her seemed to shift focus as a large, glossy bird dropped on to her shoulder. The girl didn’t flinch, though the men around her backed away.

  ‘Halla,’ called the young girl, hurrying along the walls with the raven firmly planted on her shoulder.

  With an excited hop in her step, Ingrid Teardrop ran towards her and flung her arms round the bloodied axe-maiden. Halla paused, unsure how to react and sending a confused frown towards Falling Cloud. The raven glided to the battlements, pointing his yellow beak at their embrace.

  ‘Erm, how did you get here?’ she asked, eventually lifting her arms to return Ingrid’s hug. ‘Are you hurt?’

  The young girl buried her head in Halla’s chain mail, her slender arms wrapped tightly round her waist. She was crying and her whole body shook.

  Heinrich Blood, the young priest, ran to them, slinging his short bow across his shoulders, the quiver on his back empty of arrows. He crouched next to the girl and assessed her. ‘Girl, are you injured?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s Alahan’s sister?’ asked Falling Cloud. ‘Thought she was a prisoner in Fredericksand. How the fuck did she get here?’

  ‘Shush,’ replied Halla. ‘Watch the language. Heinrich, she doesn’t appear to be wounded.’

  He stood and shook his head. ‘Well, she’s not letting go of you. I’d say she’s just in shock.’

  The news was relayed quickly. Ingrid Teardrop was alive and had somehow found her way to Tiergarten. It gave a strange escalation to their already elevated feelings of resolve. Rulag had a smaller army than they’d imagined, the defenders had repulsed the first attack and they’d recovered Algenon Teardrop’s daughter.

  ‘Ingrid! Where is she?’ shouted Alahan, running up the stone steps and appearing on the forward walls.

  The young girl pulled herself away from Halla and her weakly smiling face turned towards her brother. They met, surrounded by blood and smoke, in a tight embrace, Alahan dropping to his knees and Ingrid howling with joy.

  ‘I saw you running at the gates. I saw the trolls. I was hiding in a siege tower. I escaped from my tent. Rulag said he was going to kill you, but I caused loads of trouble and made lots of his men leave. I hate them all. I’m glad you made the trees go away. I saw them, they were horrible. They made me sick.’

  She babbled about things and people, telling her brother everything that had happened to her in no particular order and with little clarity. She spoke of their father, their home, their uncle, a Karesian called Al Hasim, another called Kal Varaz, a raven called Corvus. None of it made sense to Halla, but Alahan listened to every word, clutching his sister’s ragged clothing with tears springing in his eyes. In among the babble, it became obvious that Ingrid had thinned the ranks of Rulag’s army through a nightly campaign of sabo
tage. How she’d remained unseen was a mystery.

  ‘Halla, there’s work to be done,’ said Rexel. ‘Tender as this scene is, it won’t get done if we don’t do it.’

  ‘There are many dead and many wounded,’ offered Heinrich.

  She paused, watching the children of Algenon Teardrop reconnect. She had no brothers or sisters and had never experienced the bond she was witnessing now. It was the only beautiful thing for miles in any direction and she didn’t want to look away, fearing what her eyes would show her.

  ‘Halla,’ repeated Falling Cloud. ‘Tricken is over there shouting at us.’

  She looked round, beyond dead bodies and burning wood, and saw her full company. They spread out across the battlements and covered every walkway. Each man was looking to Halla for orders. They had killed hundreds of men and lost friends to axe and glaive, but they were still tougher than anything Rulag could conjure.

  Tricken Ice Fang, standing beside Old Father Crowe by the gatehouse, was waving his arms at her. ‘How many dead?’ shouted the red-haired chain-master. ‘We’ve got at least a hundred down here.’

  She leant on Falling Cloud and took a few deep breaths. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll get men on it,’ he replied. ‘You go and fetch some water.’

  She smiled, suddenly feeling how dry her mouth was and how bloodied her hands. Beneath her, young boys and girls of Tiergarten ran across the cobbles, delivering buckets of water and hard bread to exhausted warriors. She let Heinrich help her down the steps and then she sat heavily against a convenient barrel, stretching her legs out to relieve their stiffness. All around her, battle brothers did the same, taking rest and refreshment as best they could. She shouted a few orders to a few men and let the rest relax.

  Falling Cloud eventually counted fifty-two dead warriors from her company, and a further twelve who were too wounded to fight.

  ‘I killed men, Daughter of the Wolf,’ said Timon the Butcher, appearing over Halla with a hunk of brown bread in his hand. He had many wounds, old and new, but none appeared to bother him.

  ‘I saw,’ replied Halla. ‘You and Rorg made the difference, my friend. From now on, you and the Low Kasters stay on the walls with me.’

  She didn’t move from the barrel. Within an hour she was joined by Crowe and Tricken, both with a similar appraisal of the situation. They’d made Rulag’s army flee mostly through ferocity and surprise. They were still outnumbered and, when the men of Ursa came again, there would be no surprises. The broken gates had been replaced by piled carts and braced with huge wooden planks, but the courtyard was dangerously exposed. The only truly good news, other than the appearance of Ingrid, was the destruction of Rulag’s siege towers. He’d have to rely on ladders, though reports from the forward walls indicated that catapults were also mingling within the army of Ursa.

  The day was drawing to a close, with a crisp wind signalling the arrival of a cold night. Hundreds of defenders took their rest wherever their weary bodies would take them, with many slouching against battlements or sprawled across Ulric’s Yard and the bottom few landings of Kalall’s Steps. Halla and her commanders now sat round a campfire, eating from bowls of steaming soup. Tricken and Earem Spider Killer debated troop placements; Falling Cloud, Heinrich and Lullaby argued about where best to tend to the wounded; Crowe sat next to her in silence. She hadn’t seen Alahan or Ingrid since she left the walls, but word was that the young thain of Fredericksand was seeing his sister safe to the High Hold of Summer Wolf, after which he’d return to the vaults.

  ‘They’ll come again at first light,’ muttered Crowe. ‘Rulag will need a night to reprimand his commanders and shout himself hoarse.’

  She slurped down a mouthful of thick vegetable soup, rich with onion and carrot. ‘We can hold him off once, maybe twice more. Assuming his catapults don’t make too much of a mess.’

  Tricken contributed from across the fire. ‘They’ll try for a breach. There’s no point sending boulders into the city. They might dent a few houses, but it won’t help them get past us.’

  ‘Is there any mead?’ asked Crowe, squinting at a nearby serving boy running back and forth with a cauldron of soup.

  ‘I’ll get some, Master Crowe,’ replied the boy, placing his cauldron on the cobbles and disappearing towards Kalall’s Steps.

  ***

  The old priest was right. As the first slivers of sunlight crept in from the rolling Fjorlan Sea, Halla saw the army of Ursa begin to deploy. She was fed and rested, but her limbs were tight and a dozen small cuts were giving her grief. Falling Cloud, below, commanded the cloud-men of the Wolf Wood round Ulric’s Yard and the main gate. They were the most mobile troops she had, relying on hand-axes and light armour, and would hold the gateway. Tricken and Crowe stood with her above the ballistae yards, all looking west from the battlements.

  ‘Ballistae are sighted, my lady,’ said Tricken.

  ‘I know,’ she replied.

  ‘Men are holding firm,’ he said.

  She looked at him. ‘Tricken... I know.’

  The red-haired chain-master shrugged. ‘Didn’t like the silence.’

  ‘I’ll go and tell Rulag to hurry up,’ she quipped.

  Across the plains, the men of Ursa began to move. They held shields, locked in formation, and advanced in columns. Behind them, pulled forward by sled dogs, were the catapults. There were a dozen or so artillery pieces, each one a tall wooden frame with a single, tightly wound arm of thick timber.

  ‘Good,’ said Tricken. ‘I fucking hate waiting around to fight.’

  Halla and Crowe both gave him dark looks, but hers was tinged with amusement. If the past year had taught her anything, it was that humour was often the best defence when your axe didn’t feel sharp enough.

  With no siege towers for cover, the attackers moved slowly, keeping together behind their wall of shields. As they approached the first ruined tower and entered ballistae range, the army broke up and spread into thin lines, marching over the snow with a rhythmical thump of boots and clank of chain mail.

  ‘Start some fires,’ she said quietly, making Tricken turn to the ballistae crews and start shouting.

  Huge arrows were pulled taut and loaded with casks of pitch. From along the forward walls, a dozen fuses were touched with flame and a dozen huge bowstrings were loosed. The artillery was pointed upwards and the arrows arced towards the edge of their range, thudding into the snowy ground with a snap. Small globes of fire flared and mushroomed amidst Rulag’s army, sending men and steel into the air. Burning warriors shrieked and broke formation, but the bulk closed ranks and the advance continued. The ballistae fired again and more men were set aflame, but the attackers now broke into a jog and fanned out, bringing their long siege ladders swiftly to the front of the advance. The catapults jumped into life and sent boulders towards the city, covering the warriors of Jarvik and forcing the defenders to take cover.

  ‘Heads down!’ screamed Tricken, as a thick line of warriors ducked behind castellations and raised shields.

  The boulders were aimed at the walls, but several overshot and smashed into buildings. The rest clustered in a small section next to the gate, sending chunks of stone in all directions. The battlements filled with dust and a thick spray of snow and ice. When Halla rose from concealment and looked over the walls, she saw a thick press of warriors assembling before her city. The catapults had caused no practical breach, but had smashed a portion of the battlements, and the army of Ursa was bringing its ladders and focusing on this area.

  Halla moved quickly to the most likely point of contact, followed by Old Father Crowe and the Low Kasters. Rocks and hand-axes were thrown from the walls, striking the upturned shields below.

  ‘Hold the walls,’ she shouted as she ran. Below, she could see Falling Cloud viewing the advance through the makeshift gates. He looked up at her, his hand twitching as if he wanted to join her. ‘Rexel, stay down there,’ she called.

  All along the walls, ladders s
truck stone, concentrated in the centre where the catapults had broken a section of the battlements. Spears and poles were levelled by the defenders and ladders were pushed away, toppling backwards on to the plains. Others were harder to dislodge and shouts came from below as men began to climb.

  ‘Get rid of those ladders,’ she shouted.

  She reached the centre and stood, exposed on a broken section of wall, faced with five ladders. She assisted the men trying to dislodge them, wedging her axe under a final rung and heaving upwards. With Timon’s help, one of the ladders was flung away from the wall, but she could see dozens of men ascending the other four, dangerously close to the battlements.

  ‘Steel on steel it is,’ announced Crowe, swinging his war-hammer into the head of the first man to reach the top of the wall. The man’s skull split and he fell limply downwards.

  ‘These walls are ours!’ she roared, leading a mixed group of Low Kasters and her toughest battle brothers.

  Men reached the walls and died. All along the battlements, brutal close combat raged as defenders struggled to kill an endless stream of attackers. More ladders were brought to bear and more men formed up for their chance to ascend the walls of Tiergarten. The ballistae kept firing, sending more fire into the columns of attackers, but the crews were now occupied with defending the walls and their firing was sporadic.

  Halla chopped at anonymous heads and faces, each one that emerged atop the broken section of wall falling to join a growing pile of cleaved bodies. They kept the stone clear for what seemed like hours, until the first man of Jarvik set foot upon the battlements. A huge axe-man, wearing the red bear claw of Ursa, hacked his way through men to stand atop the walls. He roared and froth bubbled from his mouth, but he was sane enough to hold his ground and allow other men to join him.