by David Hair
Too many moving parts, his father would have said: too many unreliable allies, too many things that could go wrong. And he could see they were indeed placing too much reliance on uncoordinated units turning up at exactly the right time, with too many unknowns. Too bad, Father. We have no choice.
He kept his eyes forward. To look back was bad luck or bad for morale or something; he couldn’t remember exactly. Behind him were the archers, mostly Estellan, each bearing a spiked shield that could be driven into the ground to provide cover. Then came the laddermen, chosen from the biggest rankers, who would storm forward and climb up to the battlements once the defence had been distracted by the other attacks. If they got that far.
His heartbeat was louder than the drums.
O mighty joy! Breathless we surge, Kore in our hearts and death in our hands! Seth was beginning to think that the composer of the famous battle hymn had never set foot outside his monastery. Fucking poets!
Someone shouted – a command – and enemy arrows erupted upwards and then hissed through the night as they rained down. Seth and Vaas had their shields ready. Seth set his as wide as he could manage. A gnostic shield was effectively an extension of his own aura, an unconscious telekinetic blocking of incoming missiles and blows, but it was imperfect and where there were lots of blows, one or more might slip through. And the wider he extended, the more draining it was to hold, and the flimsier the coverage.
Most of the first volley were deflected, falling off sideways into the river, but he could hear cries: some at least had met their mark. But not many. So far, so good.
Some blows were too powerful for almost any shield, though: he heard a vicious crack! as the first of the ballistae released an instant before the ten-foot shaft of the giant crossbow quarrel ripped through the air. It struck his shield just off-centre, momentarily shredded the warding, and he felt the breeze as it whipped past his left shoulder and into two men behind him, impaling them through chest and belly and hurling them against the parapet.
Then the other three ballistae fired: two shafts sailed over his head and into the marching men behind, ripping holes in the ranks and making the whole column recoil. The third struck Vaas’ horse, just below the neck and went all the way through and out the other end, skewering it as if for roasting. The beast was thrown backwards, shrieking as it died, and Vaas was thrown clear, his shields striking the causeway walls in a burst of blue sparks.
Seth shouted in terror and involuntarily spurred his horse forward, and the Estellan archers bellowed their fiery war-cries and came after him. From then it was a nightmare as arrows shafted out of the darkness all round them. They pushed onwards and reached the wider landing before the gates, where they were finally beneath the line of fire of the four ballistae, only for searing flames to start washing down from a dozen cloaked figures above. The gnostic force was so strong he could barely protect himself, let alone anyone else. The stink of burned meat filled his nostrils and all around him the Estellan were charred to ash and blasted into oblivion.
Then boulders began to rain down.
Shields! He tried to hold them strong, to keep the men behind him alive, as more and more of his archers rushed forward to assail the fortress, but the Dokken could shield too, and few Estellan shafts found their target.
Seth caught sight of one of the men Ramon had told him about: the Sydian Zsdryk. His hood was cast back and his vulturine face was alive with glee as he blazed flame down from above. He saw Vaas engage him, sending mage-blasts upwards, and all of a sudden dazzling, chilling light was coruscating between the two magi.
Through the press came the Argundian laddermen, giant spade-bearded men with their distinctive conical helms gleaming in the light of the flames, howling their guttural battle-songs as they pushed their way into the maelstrom. Around Vaas stone and fire were being thrown continually, making his shields blaze a myriad colours. Those not warded were smashed by rock, or consumed by fire, and Seth watched aghast as skulls and limbs were crushed like eggshells, as faces were burned off, as horrifically injured lumps of malformed flesh not even identifiable as men were left in tangled, writhing heaps.
And still his men charged onwards, and now their ladders were rising against the walls.
Sigurd Vaas staggered onwards too, blasting more gnosis-fire upwards as he bawled, ‘Attack!’ and again, ‘Attack!’, and something in the man’s iron will had Seth urging his terrified mount forward as well. He glimpsed a boar-faced Dokken above, directing incandescent flames down on one of the ladders, and sent a mage-bolt at the beastman. Fuelled by terror and outrage, the mage-bolt – easily the most powerful he’d ever cast – blazed through the man’s shields as if they were paper and he disappeared from view.
Seth found himself yelling triumphantly, and took aim again.
The nearest ballista rolled right to the edge of the platform above and swung in his direction and he panicked and sent the first spell he could think of, but the warping spell aimed at the timbers wasn’t well-cast: Zsdryk batted it away almost effortlessly – and then the ballista bucked and Seth threw himself sideways out of the saddle. The shaft carved the air where he had been, hammered through the planted shield of an Estellan archer and ripped the man’s leg off in a spray of blood. More arrows fell around Seth as he struggled to reset his shields, and one pierced his thigh and pinned him to the dirt. Blinding pain shocked through him and he rolled, trying to unpin himself, and – Thank Kore! – it came free and healing-gnosis instinctively flooded the wound. He snapped off most of the shaft and left the rest where it was – he could deal with it later; right now he had work to do. Someone held out a hand and he grabbed it and lurched to his feet. His horse reared and vanished over the parapet: a whinny and a splash and it was gone.
‘Sir, sir!’ the men about him clamoured. ‘Get to the rear!’
‘No!’ he shouted. I’ll show you, Father! ‘I’m fine!’ He poured more healing-gnosis into his leg, sealing the torn flesh and blood vessels, while all around him boulders and arrows still fell. Were we supposed to get this close yet? he wondered. He couldn’t remember what the plan was any more. It didn’t matter: the Argundians continued to press forward, now all mixed up with Pallacians from the Thirteenth, Coulder’s old maniple, tramping over the ruined bodies of those who’d gone in first.
He raised his shields again to protect those around him as another ladder disintegrated in a withering blast. The attack wavered, and a Pallacian, the pilus from his personal cohort – what is the man’s name? – seized his shoulder and pulled him back to the edge of the killing ground. Looking back, he could see the rest of the causeway was still filled with torches and men, all awaiting their turn at the impregnable walls: a snake of light, waiting to strike.
Sigurd Vaas hurried towards him through the red smoky haze. ‘I think we’ve got their attention!’ he cried, then looked down and saw the broken arrow sticking out of Seth’s thigh and shouted, ‘Get to the rear, boy!’
An instant later Vaas was ripped in half by two ballista bolts at once, his body jerked away in a blur. The after-image seared Seth’s retinas as two pieces of shredded meat and bone swathed in scarlet – all that remained of the Argundian mage – came rolling to a stop twenty yards away.
Seth gripped the parapet as around him the Argundians wailed in despair and the tide of men began to ebb. For a second he was frightened that he was going to be left alone here, and that dread overpowered all other thought. He staggered toward the nearest standard-bearer and grabbed the flag from his startled grasp. ‘Next wave!’ he bellowed, his father’s face floating before his eyes. ‘Kore is with us!’
Then he turned and lurched forward once more, screaming, ‘FORWARD!’
Behind him someone started chanting his father’s name : ‘KOR-I-ON! KOR-I-ON!’
*
Fridryk Kippenegger sang of his fatherland, the deep-forested expanse at the heart of Yuros; he sang songs of heroes and Stormriders, of mystic swords and glory. Nonsense, of course, he�
��d been fighting all his life and he knew full well that war was butchery and madness, but you couldn’t come through it victorious, let alone sane, unless you pretended it was something else.
So as the fast-moving current pushed the wagons closer and closer to the walls protecting the northern gatehouse, he moved onto the next stanza, the one about the dragon-slayer and a sword of fire and gold.
‘Shut the Hel up,’ Jelaska snapped. ‘This is a secret mission, you idiot!’
He ignored her and sang louder, and the men hidden in the base of the wagon grinned as they held on grimly: their armour was so heavy, they knew they’d drown in seconds if they went in.
The Brevian, Wilbrecht, laughed. ‘They’ll never be able to hear him above that.’ He indicated the cacophony at the gates.
Their wagon came apart as they struck the rocks at the base of the tower and the men gritted their teeth and swallowed their alarm as they thrashed about until they found their footing and managed to clamber up the slippery weed-encrusted boulders to the base of the walls.
The next ‘boat’ struck and they helped the newcomers up, then the next and the next. There were eight men to each wagon-base, and seven wagons deployed for the purpose. Wilbrecht deployed his sylvanic gnosis to shore up the wagons while Hulbert, the Hollenian Water-mage, guided the craft. Jelaska was here to do – well, whatever it was she did; something nasty and sorcerous, Kip supposed.
He met Wilbrecht’s eye. The wagons fixed, the Brevian had a bow nocked and gnosis ready-kindled on the arrowheads. A cheating way to kill, Kip had always thought. Typical of a race who wear skirts …
‘Ready?’ Wilbrecht rasped.
‘Yar! Always, little man. Don’t point that thing near me.’ He rotated his right shoulder, flexed his biceps and glanced at Jelaska. ‘How do we get in?’
The haggard Argundian woman jabbed a thumb towards a bridge that crossed the central channel and joined the two island-forts. ‘Weren’t you listening to the briefing?’ she said scornfully. ‘That way, up onto the bridge and in. I’ll follow when I’m ready.’
‘Yar, yar, I was listening,’ Kip lied. Details are for small people. I’m here to fight. He bowed his head and muttered a prayer – though not in any hope of having it answered. The Schlessen gods were vindictive bastards who didn’t answer prayers, but they were sure to punish those who didn’t pray. Mostly they wanted blood, and it was always best to offer someone – or something – else’s. Minaus Bullhead, hear me! A calf, burned for you when I return home. This I swear. He reckoned he currently owed the god about seventy beasts, more than he could hope to own in a lifetime.
‘Kore will protect us,’ Wilbrecht said, smugly sure that his god did answer prayers.
‘Kore? Neyn, Kore has no power here. In battle there is only the Bullhead.’ Kip drew his sword, kissed the blade. ‘Let us go and find some of these Dokken, yar? See if they can fight.’ Schlessen legends were full of them, snatching babies and killing the unwary: fairy tales, he’d always thought. ‘Let’s see how they like cold steel.’
They clambered around the base of the walls, their movement masked by the clamour at the gates, though they could see people moving above them. Perhaps Jelaska was concealing them, because no one called out or raised an alarm. In a few moments they were beneath the central span. A wagon rolled past as Wilbrecht joined him. ‘We move as the gates are opened for the wagon,’ he breathed, his voice calm. ‘Save us the trouble of knocking on the door.’
Kip grinned. Good man, this, for a skirted Kore-kisser.
The signal came seconds later, a mental command from Jelaska. Kip soared upwards with a kinetically enhanced leap and landed square on the bridge, the stone solid beneath his feet and a dark shape before him. He glimpsed a swarthy face and thrust, the blade of his sword going into the man’s mouth and out the back of his head.
He kicked the corpse away. For you, Bullhead.
There was more shouting, and a mage-bolt seared past his shoulder, missing everyone. It came from somewhere above, but there was no time to look; he was already storming into the loosely spread enemy soldiers, a two-handed sweeping blow hacking down a Keshi archer partway through drawing his bow.
‘Minaus!’ he bellowed, surging onwards. Wilbrecht had gone the other side, his bow-string thrumming, and he felt more gnosis-blasts shaking the air. Another Keshi, this one armed with a curved sword, erupted from a doorway, but he blocked, took a slash on his mailed arm that barely tore the skin, battered down the man’s guard and thrust six foot of straight steel into his guts. The Keshi looked down with panicked eyes that rolled back up into his skull as he slid to the ground.
‘MINAUS! THE BULLHEAD IS HERE! VORWAERTS!’ he bellowed at the Pallacians swarming onto the bridge behind him as he made for the gates. Wilbrecht appeared from the far side of the wagon, arrows flying as he cut down the fleeing enemy. Yar, in the back, he thought. Typical Brevian! They pounded forward together, through the gates, one hacking, the other shooting down the remaining gatemen, and found themselves in a small square from which narrow streets wound away in all directions. Wilbrecht lit an arrow with gnostic fire and sent it blazing into the air. It burst into flame: the signal that they were inside the northern keep.
A few seconds later another rose from the south side of the river in answer, and hundreds of torches sprang into light as the Khotri army surged along the southern causeway.
*
As the signal-arrows arced gracefully through the sky, Baltus Prenton laughed aloud and sent his windskiff slewing gracelessly past the southern island. He was struggling to guide it, for the little vessel had twenty legionaries clinging to ropes and hanging from the sides. Ramon Sensini, in the prow of the skiff, peered down anxiously, but although an array of terrified faces turned his way as the craft staggered through the air, no one had yet fallen off.
‘Hold on boys, nearly there!’ Ramon called, his eyes on the southern fort’s outer gate-towers. He could see a strong force there, with ten or more robed figures wrapped in faintly visible gnosis shields, and dozens of archers, but the ballistae platforms had been emptied and the deadly apparatus dismantled and moved to the northern gate for the assault the Dokken were anticipating there.
They were certain the Khotri wouldn’t get involved: chalk up one for the plan. He selected a robed shape, presumably a Dokken, who was clearly in view and oblivious to the cloaked skiff passing right by him in the darkness. His mage-bolt streaked across the sky, a narrow thrust of pure destructive energy, ripped through the unfocused shield and punched a coin-sized hole in the Dokken’s chest before burning out the other side. The Dokken collapsed with a grunt as his colleagues around him shouted in alarm, and the sky lit up.
Baltus laughed again, and banked away, leaving the counter-strikes ripping harmlessly at his rear shields: the Dokken, too concerned with protecting themselves, failed to factor in the windskiff’s speed, so the vessel lumbered past untouched. Not that Baltus’ manoeuvring was much appreciated by the men clinging to the ropes below the hull.
‘Fuck! Fly straight, can’t you?’ someone wailed.
‘Enjoy the view,’ Ramon shouted back unsympathetically and grinned at Baltus at the chorus of cursing that arose in response.
He scanned the way ahead, using his gnostic sight to penetrate the darkness. The wagon-boats were clustered around the northern island, beneath the bridge just as planned. He grinned. Phase two, right on schedule! Buona fortuna, Kip!
Beyond the northern keep he could see the causeway was filled with torchlight, and now the noise reached him: the crescendo of battle that had haunted his dreams since Shaliyah. Baltus sent the skiff climbing ponderously towards the highest tower, and Ramon reached down with his left hand and fed his own gnosis into the keel to help the overloaded skiff. Even with the two of them working to keep it on course it was wobbling badly and they careened over the battlements with just inches to spare. There was a great flash of flames from the northern gatehouse and Ramon suddenly caught sight of thousands
of men fighting on the causeway. Come on, Vaas! he cried to himself, keep them pinned!
Baltus brought the skiff about and hovered it about ten feet above a roof-top garden. They could all see that there were several Keshi archers stationed there, but the cloaking spell had worked and they were only just starting to look up. ‘Go-go-go!’ Baltus called urgently, and Ramon leaped out, using Air-gnosis to steady his fall.
Behind him Lukaz’s cohort released their grips on hull and ropes and dropped, yelling in fear and exhilaration. The skiff, suddenly unburdened and filled with energy, shot upwards, while twenty-one bodies struck the roof-garden’s grass and flowerbeds and twisted and rolled to their feet. Ramon heard at least two men cry out in pain as they landed, but he had other things to focus on as he struck the ground between two Keshi archers who were just spinning around to deal with this new threat.
‘Arrivederci!’ he shouted, and flipped his hands. Using telekinetic force he hurled the hapless guards over the parapets, then fired off a mage-bolt at another. The blue fire made the man’s ribs glow as his chest burst apart. Then Kel Harmon landed beside him, the flankman all grace and power as he slashed his shortsword through another man’s bow and into his shoulder. The archer staggered and Harmon flipped him over the edge.
The rest of the cohort had found their feet except for Holdyne, who was rolling around, clutching his right ankle and yowling in agony, and Hedman, who was silently cradling his arm to relieve a dislocated shoulder. The few remaining Keshi on the rooftop tried to make a run for the stairs, but Lukaz gestured and the cohort ranged forward. Harmon’s blade was a flickering blur as it tore out the first Keshi’s throat in an eye-blink, while young Trefeld and big Manius combined to cut down another. Vidran launched a javelin that took another man through the back and pinned him to the wooden door until rat-faced Bowe wrenched the Keshi off the door and threw him to the ground, then punched his sword through his breastplate, just to make sure. The last man, seeing the cohort closing in, chose instead to jump, wailing, from the parapet. Ramon went to the edge and peered down. They were about five flights up. Even in the dark he could see the man, an ungainly heap in a narrow street below.