‘Looks fairly reasonable to me,’ Kiva frowned. ‘That thing represents a danger to the gates.’
His brother snorted. ‘It’ll never touch the gates. They’ve not thought it through. Watch.’
Quintillian turned to the captain standing nearby, waiting for orders.
‘I don’t want a single shot or arrow loosed at them until they’ve decided they failed. The moment they start to retreat, hit them with the artillery. Loose shot and bolts. Same as yesterday. They already know we have the artillery, so it’s revealing nothing.’
The captain saluted and passed the orders on to several runners, who disappeared off around the walls, carrying the messages to the men at the weapons and the various officers in charge of wall sections.
‘Come on,’ Quintillian urged his brother. ‘Aldegund won’t try anything until his camp’s set up. Let’s go watch the Khan make his first mistake.’
Kiva followed his brother down the three flights of stairs from the Eyrie, past the room full of artillery shot and the room with the huge map of the city surroundings, and out onto the wall tops. Quickly, they hurried around the perimeter of the city until they were roughly opposite the gathered nomad horde. There, they made for the Inda Gate, which would be the natural target for a ram.
The gate had once been the weakest point in the walls, but one forward-thinking emperor had had the entire structure strengthened, buttressing it, cladding the lower two thirds of the towers in an extra layer of thick stone blocks and raising the tops by two more storeys. Now, it represented one of the strongest gates in the walls. Below, in a huge arch carved with representations of the war god Martus and inscriptions commemorating the gate’s builder and its restorer, a huge set of oak doors, 8-inches thick and banded and studded with iron was held fast with three bars each almost a foot thick. Then, if that should give, a second identical set of doors filled the inner edge of the arch, forming a second defence. And inside the gate a small barbican had been constructed with a third set of doors and archer platforms all around, forming a killing zone that would wreak havoc upon invaders.
The enemy were coming by the time the two of them took a place on the gate top. The captain of that section saluted them and Quintillian waved at him. ‘Remember: no reaction until they run. All right?’
The man nodded and saluted again.
The enemy had managed to reach a reasonable pace, and Kiva was struck suddenly by how good these horsemen were. To manage 30 riders moving in perfect unison, tight enough that the great trunk between them hardly swayed, was a feat of horsemanship no imperial cavalry unit could hope to achieve. And the rest of the 200 or so riders were out in front and to the sides as though forming some sort of shield. Kiva couldn’t quite figure what they were intending.
‘I know that ram,’ Quintillian said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘Sounds ridiculous, I know, but I’ve seen it before. It was on a painting in the Khan’s palace back in Ual-Aahbor. It’s either the one the Khan’s father failed to take a city with, or it’s a damn good copy of it.’
Kiva frowned down at the approaching riders. The great heavy bronze head on the trunk was a very stylized dragon, complete with wavering tongue and horns. It reminded him of the decorative jade dragons in the palace that had been gifts over the centuries from emissaries of the Jade Emperor.
‘Now watch them realize how idiotic they are.’ Quintillian grinned. Finally, the surrounding horsemen unslung their bows and, with incredible skill, guided their horses with knees and hips alone as they nocked arrow after arrow, drawing them from wide quivers on their saddles with almost mechanical speed and releasing them up at the battlements on the far side of the moat. As they reached the water’s edge, they wheeled left and right, continually sending shaft after shaft up at the walls. Not one made it to the wall top, and precious few even crossed the water.
‘They’re not actually expecting to cause any damage, of course,’ Quintillian explained. ‘They’re trying to keep any archers’ heads down to protect the ram. As if I’d bother wasting precious arrows on that thing.’
Kiva continued to watch as the riders constantly wheeled their horses, racing back and forth along 20 or 30 paces of wall to either side of the bridge, continually loosing arrows at the parapet.
‘They’ll be mighty irritated when they return and have to restring their bows,’ Quintillian cackled, then caught the look on Kiva’s face. ‘The bow strings will be getting wet,’ he explained, ‘stretched and ruined in the rain. Only an idiot has his archers out in the rain, which leads me to believe that the Khan isn’t the one behind this particular push. He’s not so stupid.’
Kiva returned his attention to the action below and watched it fail.
The ram reached the end of the bridge and the horsemen carrying it reined in suddenly, realizing that they would not fit onto the bridge in two files with the ram between them. As Quintillian howled with laughter next to him, Kiva couldn’t help but chuckle at the farce unfolding below him. The riders had moved in perfect unison but, taken by surprise by their inability to fit on the bridge, such perfect organization had failed utterly and they had all skittered to a halt independently. The result was chaos. The huge tree trunk bobbed and dipped, then swung one way, smashing a horse and knocking it over so that the rider fell, letting go of the rope. The ram then swung back, smashing into another horse. Its rider howled as he fell from the steed over the bridge side and into the moat which, here, was a good 8 feet down just to water level. He would have to swim some distance to find a place he could climb out. Sure enough, the man swam perhaps 20 paces before the weight of his armour and furs dragged him under and he failed to reappear.
At the end of the bridge, the travesty continued as the log took out two more horses before the rest had the presence of mind to drop it to the gravel.
‘Captain?’ Quintillian said happily, ‘You may now pass the word to the artillery. Tell them to have fun.’
There was a pause of about 20 heartbeats while the horsemen below milled about, trying to decide what to do next, and then they turned en masse to ride back to their camp just as the first thunks, thuds and clanks rang out from the towers. Maybe a quarter of the riders and horses were pounded and minced by flying stones or pierced through by 3-foot iron bolts before they were up to speed in their flight. Quintillian was chuckling as the second wave from the artillery took perhaps half the remaining force, and then the few panicked survivors were out of range and racing back to their camp.
‘Well, now that was amusing.’ Quintillian grinned. Then he sighed, and his face slipped to a more serious tone. ‘Sadly, that sort of thing won’t happen much, and soon we’ll start to face proper threats.’
The two men stood quietly for a while as the men on the walls congratulated the artillerists to a background din of howling and shrieking from dying men and animals below.
‘Aldegund is being cautious,’ Quintillian noted, gesturing off to the left. Their view was less clear from here than from the Eyrie, but even Kiva could see that the northern lord had begun to set up camp on the near edge of the forest, at the top of the rise that faced the city. His men – at least the imperial ones, if not the barbarians – were setting up a proper fortification with a rampart and ditch, and pickets had been set with torches of pitch that burned even in the endless drizzle.
‘Very defensive,’ Kiva noted.
‘He’s just preparing himself.’
‘I’m not so sure.’ The emperor frowned. ‘Watch him over today and tonight. I suspect he will make no move against the city, even in terms of tests and forays. Maybe Aldegund has committed himself to treason, but there will be allied lords in that army and commanders in the Fourth who took oaths to me. They will be less willing to commit until they can be sure of success. I think they will stay out of the fight until they can be certain of being on the winning side. And for all Aldegund’s strength, a sizeable part of his force is made up of independents. The army may have been turned in
principle, but an oath is a powerful thing, and they might be a lot less willing to put blade to flesh when they’re face to face with the enemy and remember that they are all part of the same army. It takes a hard man to kill his colleagues.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Quintillian said, peering off towards the burgeoning fortress. ‘That could buy us precious time.’
‘Watch this,’ Quintillian nudged him. The riders had returned to their camp and now that Kiva squinted, he could just make out two figures emerging from the large circular tent on a prominent rise.
‘The smaller one will be the Khan. I can’t make out the features of the other, but I can tell you even without looking that it’s Ganbaatar, the Khan’s son.’
‘The one you told me about? The half-nomad?’
‘That’s the one,’ Quintillian confirmed. ‘He’s far from stupid, but certainly doesn’t have his father’s wit. That being said, I’m not sure I’d want to face him in an arena. His skills lie in areas other than strategy.’ He paused, a thought striking him. ‘I would wager that it was Ganbaatar that sent that little deputation against the gate. Whether he was trying to impress the Khan or just getting over-enthusiastic, it smacks of nomad thinking, not the Khan, and I can’t imagine any of the clan chiefs having the wherewithal to commit to that without their overlord’s consent. That was nomad thinking, enhanced by the impetuousness of youth.’
Kiva smiled. ‘I can imagine the Khan will be having some fairly severe words with his son, then.’
‘Very much so. And if the Khan brought that ram here all the way from the Jade Empire because it has a family connection, then he will be less than pleased that he’s lost it in the first hour of the siege.’ Quintillian chuckled and turned to the section officer again. ‘Do me a kindness, Captain. Send a party down to the bridge. If any horses are unharmed bring them inside, gather anything of value from the fallen nearby and saw the head off that ram. Bring the head inside and put the log across the far end of the bridge. Might help slow any advance down in time.’
The captain saluted and sent off his men.
‘What will you do with the ram?’ Kiva asked.
‘Have it mounted above the gate. It will niggle at the Khan every time he looks at the city.’
‘Might that not goad him into acting more viciously?’
‘It might make him act precipitously. People who plan when they’re irritated miss important things.’
Kiva nodded. ‘I think it might be time to send a deputation out to Aldegund’s army.’
‘What? Why?’
‘Because Aldegund has committed treason, but it is within my power to forgive such things. Perhaps an offer of amnesty might bring Aldegund and his men back to the fold?’
Quintillian stared at him. ‘You must be jesting, brother. That man is leading a revolt against you. He’s suborned your army. Besieged your capital. Fuck, he kidnapped Jala!’
Kiva nodded again. ‘And I will never forgive him personally for those things, but I have to consider the good of the empire before my own welfare. If we could bring Aldegund or some of his men back to our side, we might be able to turn the tide or buy ourselves precious breathing room. I can’t overlook the possibility.’
‘Don’t do it, Kiva. I don’t care what you think, Aldegund is not sitting on the fence. He’s opposed to us, and if he’s staying out of it for now there’s a good reason. Aldegund is a northern lord. He thinks he’s our equal, Kiva.’
‘And he probably is in truth, Quint. Grandfather started out as a barbarian recruit, after all, and ended his days as a marshal and the father of an emperor. Shit, he came from lands not far from Aldegund’s own. We may very well be related. The point is: if it means a chance for the people of Velutio, then duty demands we make an attempt at reconciliation.’
‘It’s a mistake, Kiva.’
‘One I have to make, nonetheless.’
‘Then you’re not going yourself. Send someone else.’
Kiva turned a lopsided grin on his brother. ‘I’m not an idiot, Quint.’
Taking a deep breath, the emperor strolled back across the wall, noting with interest an altercation going on in the nomad camp where the Khan seemed to be berating his men. A quarter of an hour’s walk brought him back to the Eyrie, below which was the Shadow King Gate. Here, since they had made the tower their headquarters this morning, their entourage remained gathered, a number of senior politicians and officers of the guard. Kiva gestured to a man in a senior uniform.
‘Fetch me ink and vellum.’
As the equipment was brought over and a desk set up, the brothers watched the northerners’ camp taking shape. It was a properly-constructed imperial temporary camp. Someone in Aldegund’s force must have been a senior military commander. Taking a breath, Quintillian carefully scrawled a dozen lines of text on the vellum, dabbed the ink with the linen provided, then rolled it up and slid the vellum into a leather scroll case and jammed the lid on. He then dripped a blob of purple wax on the join, stamping it with the imperial seal from the signet ring on his left hand and waving it around to dry.
‘Prefect?’
The officer hurried back over with a bow.
‘Have a small deputation sent out to the rebel army. Only volunteers, but I’d like one officer and one member of the imperial court among them to maintain the appropriate levels of authority. They need to see Lord Aldegund or the most senior officer of the imperial army in that camp, whichever they can. They should deliver this scroll and wait for an answer.’
The officer saluted again and disappeared from the wall top two steps at a time. There was a pause of several minutes, during which the two brothers spent their time leaning on the parapet watching the enemy. Aldegund and his men were well organized. Finally, they heard the gates opening, and a group of ten horsemen sped away from the city across the open ground, leaving a trail through the wet grass as the gates closed behind them. Kiva and his brother watched, tense, as the horsemen approached the enemy camp and slowed. There was a brief discussion with the pickets at spearpoint, and then they were admitted. Once inside the northern camp, behind the ramparts and the defensive works and among the tents, the deputation was lost to sight. The brothers waited.
Finally, the guards at the enemy gateway parted and a single horse and rider emerged. Kiva felt his spirits sink at the sight, sure of what it signified. They watched as the rider returned and, as he neared, they descended the stairs and waited as the gates were opened. Kiva felt the breath catch in his throat as the horse and rider passed back into the city. The horse was a well-trained imperial military mount, and had returned of its own volition. The rider was still alive, but likely wished he wasn’t. His eyes had been carved out, his legs pinned to his saddle with ten nails and his arms to his legs with six more each. Blood swathed both man and animal, and the courtier’s face was rapidly greying as he bled out.
‘I think you have your answer, Kiva,’ Quintillian sighed.
Wordlessly the pair ascended the stairs once more, this time passing the wall top and climbing on up the Eyrie to the place with the best view of both enemy camps. There was activity now, and Kiva was further dismayed to see that it centred around nine tall poles outside the camp gate, each bearing the head of one of his deputation. That sealed it, then. There would be no negotiation with his former subjects. Aldegund and his rebels had set themselves irrevocably against the legitimate emperor.
The siege of Velutio had begun.
Chapter XXVI
Of Siegecraft and the Unexpected
The morning had dawned brighter than the previous day, though the ground remained saturated and the scent of fresh earth and damp grass clung to the air. The few clouds scudded high across the vault of the sky presaging no further deluge.
Kiva watched Quintillian leaning on the parapet of the Eyrie, chewing on bread and freshly churned butter and periodically taking a pull of fresh well water. He smiled. Barely an hour had gone by since his brother had returned when Quintillian ha
dn’t eaten something. The privations of his months among the horse clans had left the man with a hole in the pit of his belly that never seemed to fill.
‘Morning, brother.’
Quintillian looked over his shoulder and smiled, though there was no genuine humour in the expression. In fact, he looked extremely tense.
‘What is it?’
‘Something’s going to happen this morning. Something big. I can feel it building, like the pressure before a thunderstorm.’
Kiva could feel no such thing and wandered over to lean on the rapidly drying stonework next to his brother. ‘What do you think?’
‘I cannot work out Aldegund, and that irritates me. He’s not a complicated man. These northern lords are direct and not spiral thinkers. I’ll admit he’s unusually subtle, given the fact that he’s kept his betrayal secret all this time, but now he’s openly arrayed against us, yet doing nothing but sulking in his camp and beheading messengers. No,’ he corrected himself, ‘that’s what he seems to be doing. I’m pretty sure it’s not what he’s actually doing. I don’t like not being able to work him out. A large part of our chances of survival rely on our being able to predict the enemy’s moves and react accordingly.’
‘Well, as long as we keep a close eye on them…’
‘But then there’s the problem of the Khan.’ Quintillian waved his hand vaguely at the nomad camp. ‘He’s preparing for something big. There’ve been men swarming all over those siege engines this morning and running around in preparation. But we know so little about their organization and their abilities I can’t guess what they’ll try.’
He huffed irritably. ‘Then there’s the problem of the pair of them. Bad enough not being able to work out what Aldegund’s up to or what the Khan’s planning, but why are they not working together? They’re allies – we all know that now, and it’s no secret, so why maintain such separate campaigns. The Khan cannot use those siege engines without Aldegund’s men. His nomads would have precious little idea of what to do. And at the same time, Aldegund has the men with the ability to hurl rocks at us, but no artillery. So why aren’t they working together? If it were you and I out there, those great onagers would already be throwing stones at the walls. But nothing’s happening. I cannot predict what’s going to go on this morning, and it’s driving me mad.’
Insurgency (Tales of the Empire Book 4) Page 31