The people thronged out of Eshly, nicely in line but still under obvious stress, eager to make their way to the other side. They pushed and pulled their carts loaded with whatever they could hold atop small and often fragile wagons, rapidly flooding the road to the capital as soon as the gate let them pass through.
The ugly, relentless rumors that had begun to spread in force earlier in the day had made their imagined fears palpable. And with every justification, it was clear now. The first of the fleeing people were almost to the tree line when the arrows started to fall. They pushed and barreled forward, their politeness gone.
Kiiryas had stood watching from the edge of the gate, standing next to one of his friends in the guard.
“What was that? I swear it looks as though someone is shooting at them from the wood line. Arrows, see them?”
“No, but the army is southeast. We haven’t heard of anyone on this side from the scouts. Can’t be…”
“We have to get everyone back into the city. You make sure the gate stays open until everyone is back through. I am going to drag back this way everyone I can!” Kiiryas shouted.
Kiiryas darted through the gate, running swiftly, and grabbed an old man trying to stand with an arrow through his shoulder.
“Hold the gate,” his friend shouted. “We have to get them back in.”
Kiiryas darted back through, grabbed the elderly man around the waist and tugged him into his own body. Then he handed the old man across to the other guards. “Take him to safety. Get the people organized and the wounded clear of the gate!”
His voice was masterful, definite, and no one argued with it.
The arrows were falling rapidly among the civilians on the road, dozens of archers firing now, and people falling, blocking the road in every direction. Some crawled in agony across the verges, low wails and tortured moans in the air.
The arrows were slim, not the worst for inflicting lasting damage, but certainly more than sufficient to maim and stop everyone in their tracks, bringing them to the ground and leaving them writhing and screaming, bleeding out. Those hit in major organs would die of blood loss, but a few could be lucky.
The arrows bought the enemy much time, too.
“Leave your carts, grab the wounded! Go!” Kiiryas shouted over the screams of the injured. He grabbed a cart from one of the people and unceremoniously dumped every small object out of it onto the road, ensuring it was empty and ready to carry one of the wounded. He grabbed a man who was limping back toward town carrying a small child, also trying to support his screaming wife with an arrow all the way through her thigh.
Kiiryas pushed him roughly into the cart with his wife, setting the small child down across the man’s lap as he wheeled the cart toward the gate. Two men, seeing his action, grabbed the handles of the cart from him and pushed it all the way in for him while he ran back to save the other wounded.
“We have to close the gate,” the sergeant told the guards.
“No! We have to wait,” they argued. “Anyone still out there is dead if we close it now.”
“We are all dead if they get through the gate. That is an order. Close the gate!” His tone could not be mistaken.
The guards began to slowly lower the gate, trying to allow as many in as possible before it was sealed, but they bowed low and scraped beneath it until the very final second, some even risking being crushed to death beneath its enormous weight.
Kiiryas also slipped in the bottom of the nearly closed gate.
“What are you doing? There are still people out there!” he screamed at the guard.
“I had no choice. I had no choice. I had no choice,” the sergeant repeated over and over, staring blankly at the now severed portal and listening to the terrified wails and screams of those who had not made it through to the other side.
The cries of the injured added tenfold to the chaos within the city, but soon, the hideous screams of those trapped outside the wall went silent as they were cut down by the arrows’ flights.
Kiiryas shook his head in sadness and scampered up onto the wall. “There must be at least fifty archers out there. How did the scouts not see so many moving around the city?”
He slipped from the wall faster than he had gone up, then disappearing into the confusion to find Jorick or Glem.
✽✽✽
“Cowards,” said the young man standing up from the road to the old soldier behind him. “Did you see them turn and run when our arrows started to fall?” The buckets that surrounded him were nearly empty of the hundreds of arrows they had held only a few moments before. “I need to work on my accuracy. It is hard to control so many at once. Anyway, I hit a few.”
“It was an impressive display for certain, but don’t get too cocky. Those were not soldiers you were shooting at. Those were farmers and traders with women and children. Soldiers will be harder. Armor and shields will turn arrows, and for soldiers, we were too close to do enough damage before they would have gotten to us," the veteran cautioned his young charge. "That's why he sent me with you to keep you alive in case there were soldiers escorting the group out.
“The gate is closed now,” he went on. “Do you think you can just stick a few of these remaining arrows into the gate to spook them? The distance should be well out of normal bow range, so it should make them think twice about opening up again."
The young man smiled as he settled back to the ground, closing his eyes. The boulders remaining on each side of the road from when it had been cut began to quiver slightly.
"Let's find out."
✽✽✽
“Did you see that? Looked like something moved in the woods,” one of the guards at the South Gate asked.
“Probably just a deer or something. My pa and I got one there just a couple weeks ago, young roe deer. There were a lot of them out there. Besides, if it was Hasdingium, there are supposed to be thousands of them. I think we’ll see them clear when they get here.”
“You're probably right. I would hate to wake the sergeant for a deer,” he said, nodding and smiling.
The two guards decided that the movement must have been an animal of some kind.
A mile behind the tree line, General Inehorn was busily appraising the situation and taking updates from his scouts.
“The city is just ahead, General,” the soldier said.
General Inehorn looked down from his horse at the soldier reporting. “Pass the word to stop back from the tree line. It is unlikely that they don’t know we are here at all, but we will use that ignorance to make things uncomfortable for them. Have the fire mages burn the fields around the city. All at once, if possible, and then hold the fire there until after nightfall. The longer the fires burn, the more afraid the city will be.”
“Yes, sir. I will pass on your orders to the mages, sir.”
✽✽✽
The fire began suddenly on three sides of the city. On each one, it started in the middle and raced to the corners in less than a minute, and once it surrounded on three sides, it began to close slowly across the fourth. Like a curtain drawn across a window, the fire swept through the fields, making its way to the walls of the city and consuming everything in its path. The heat from the fire rose in the air, causing a haze that obscured the tree line on the other side. It was hard to tell through the smoke and haze, but it looked as if the forest was untouched.
“Shit, that's not normal. Wake the sergeant,” the guard said to his friend as the fires first began. But by the time he was off the wall and heading into the gatehouse barrack, the flames was already pushing toward the city.
“Why didn’t you wake me sooner?” the sergeant demanded.
“Sir, we woke you as soon as it first began. The fire covered everything in just a moment. I’ve never seen anything like it. One minute it was just a small flame over there…”
He pointed just west of the southern road. “It spread sideways first and then ran in a sheet toward the city. The wind behind it is helping.”
“Quick. Send word to the Captain. The city siege has started, and the city is closed off. Run, man.”
✽✽✽
“Okay, men, start at the gate and be sure to check all the houses on either side. Go a street in each direction and a block from the wall. We don’t want anyone injured accidentally.”
Jorick looked from the soldiers he had brought with him to the engineers. “Is everything ready?”
“We cleared the houses and have weakened the walls in the direction we want them to flow as they come down. Once you give the word, the ox teams will pull the last posts on each side. We should have a smooth collapse at that point.”
One of the guardsmen came running back to where Jorick and the engineer were talking. “Lieutenant, we cleared each building, including the attic, cellars, and closets. Everyone is out of the area, and we have men positioned along each access into the area to prevent anyone from returning until it is safe.”
Jorick nodded at the man and turned to the head engineer.
“Go ahead and drop them. Make sure that the gate is properly sealed when they come down. Three points into the city is too many, but it is better than four.”
The head engineer walked back toward the building.
“Hook the teams up. We are cleared to go to work.”
The other men maneuvered the four teams of six oxen each into play and hooked up the huge rope that ran through a window and into each building. “On my mark. Pull!”
The teams moved forward with their hooves pressing individual cobbles deep into the street bed as they began to strain against their yokes. The ropes went tight and creaked as they stretched. The head engineer walked between the teams and the men controlling them, looking across the street and in through the windows of the first house.
At a distance, he could see the front supporting posts of the houses slowly beginning to bow out. He walked back to the teams. “One more good pull should do it. We’re almost there.”
The teams were eased off their yokes for a moment before they racked forward, back into them. The crack of the posts giving way echoed through the street, and the lines went slack for a moment while the oxen walked forward easily for ten feet, then the second line to each team went tight.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Jorick said to the head engineer, raising his eyebrows, slightly underwhelmed.
Without turning to him, the engineer made a wait motion with his hand. “Give it a minute. Mark! Pull!” he shouted a second time, eyes intently trained on the house up ahead.
The front of the house bulged out at the bottom of the windows before its front wall cracked all the way down and collapsed, a huge pile of rubble and dust crashing to the ground.
The sudden shock to the structure caused the rest of the structure to follow the front wall into total collapse, like an avalanche sliding sideways and covering the bottom half of the gate in rubble. The tremendously loud noise of the house crashing echoed down the street, and made Jorick jump and cover his ears with his hands.
He looked at the pile and then at the head engineer who was simultaneously just turning to look at him. “I take it back.”
The head engineer turned back to his men.
“Set up the second one.”
They rushed into the house directly across from the one that had just fallen, beginning to prepare it the same way.
Half an hour later, a second loud crash echoed down the street, and this time, only the top foot of the gate was still visible behind the huge pile of what had recently been the houses of two of the wealthiest merchants in the city.
✽✽✽
The men on the South Gate received no warning when the boulders began to fall, dozens at a time dropping along the wall of the city. They were much smaller than could be thrown by a regular siege engine, but coming at a much faster rate.
The huge rocks from a trebuchet or catapult would have reduced the city wall to rubble in minutes. These smaller stones didn’t do that but as they fell, they smashed arms and legs, and collapsed roofs on buildings near the wall, creating chaos in their range. Trapped on the wall between the stones falling and the inferno that raged on the bare hardened ground outside, the guards were at a loss for what to do. They hunkered down in the gatehouses, watching through the balistraria helplessly.
Throughout the city, the men dressed as merchants and tradesmen began to start fights with the citizens of Eshly.
They skillfully pulled multiple people into a fight, then would extract themselves and move on to start another one.
Each fight pulled a few of the city guards away from their patrols to deal with it. It was a strenuous, demanding onslaught.
Alyra and Rues desperately held onto each other as they ran frantically back into the city and to the safety of the gates that they had only just passed. Oarf and Eiriean fled right behind them as they tried desperately to stay together in the press of people. The screams of the injured echoed between the houses on either side of the gate, making it hard for anyone to hear each other. The smell of blood was in the air, also the stench of fear.
“We are not going to get out before it starts. Quickly, let's get clear and go back to the inn. We can send word to your grandfather and figure out what to do next,” Oarf said.
“Yeah, we should get clear. There are still people coming in. Oh my God! They are closing the gates. People are going to be trapped outside,” Rues took two steps toward the gate to try and stop them before they slammed down.
Alyra stared in shock. “They just left them outside.”
“There’s nothing we can do here. Let’s get to the inn,” Rues said, tugging Alyra’s arm. The first boulder landed behind the gate with a crash and crushed a man completely, driving his body into the stones so hard that chips of stone sprayed in every direction. The second one fell and landed a dozen feet away, destroying a cart that had never made it through the gate.
The not at all orderly retreat from the gate devolved even further, everyone screaming and pushing and running. Everyone, men and women for themselves. Alyra looked up and saw that there were many more boulders beginning to arch down into the road. Still holding Rues, she began to run for her life, almost dragging her friend clear of the destruction.
She looked for Eiriean and Oarf, but they were nowhere to be seen. “I don’t see them anywhere. We have to find them.”
Rues grabbed Alyra and turned her back.
“They will have gotten clear and be headed back to the inn. That was the plan. We should go there too.”
“But what if they are hurt or something?”
“They’ll be fine. We just have to get back to the inn,” Rues replied. They began to move along the buildings at the edge, staying out of the throng of people trying to escape. They turned into the first alley they came across, breathing heavily.
✽✽✽
Garen left the meeting in the map room worried about the information that Kiiryas had brought. Soldiers already in the city could compromise the city's defense completely, so he hurried through the streets, watching alertly for anything that seemed out of the ordinary for a city preparing for a siege.
The vendors in the market were trying to sell the last of their stock, all the people frantically attempting to bid over one another to make sure that they had enough food to last.
No one knew yet that the city’s stores would be opened to them after the siege started, by order of the Governor.
If Garen hurried, he felt sure he should be able to reach the South Gate just before the guard changed. So, he picked up his pace and moved swiftly down the main road south of the market, heading toward the gate. And there, he came upon a group of guards heading south.
“Sergeant, are you the relief for the South Gate?” Garen asked the man at the head of the guard group as they passed.
But the guards kept moving, his approach unacknowledged.
Garen reached for the guard bringing up the rear of the group, spinning him around to try and get a good l
ook at his face. He didn’t recognize him. Now, at the intrusion, the whole group of guards came to a halt while Garen tried to process the momentary confusion. He had trained every guard in the city.
The remainder of the men faced the other way, rigid.
But why didn’t he remember this one? He had a good memory for faces and names. Something was amiss here. More than amiss. Something was untoward—likely, subterfuge.
The guard sergeant was now walking back toward Garen.
“When did this man join your group, Sergeant?” Garen asked as he stared intently at the man’s expressionless face.
The selected guard raised his chin high in defiance, steely eyes gazing down as if he challenged Garen silently.
“This man has been with me for months,” the sergeant replied. “He is new, but be sure he is one of our best men.”
But the guard sergeant failed to look Garen in the eye.
That alone said enough to tell him of an untruth being voiced. Garen spun around the other men one by one, silent, assessing each from every conceivable angle. He didn’t know any of the men in the guard patrol. Too late, he recognized the truth.
He jumped back and drew his sword.
As Garen set off slashing at the guard sergeant, the man stepped forward and used the chainmail on his arm to turn the blade. He reached up and grabbed Garen by the chin with his right hand, and snapped his neck.
And now, in a rapid turnabout of the situation, he held Garen’s body as it went limp, then caught Garen's sword before it could clatter to the ground.
“What should we do with him, Lord Hazk?” one of the men asked of the guard sergeant now holding Garen effortlessly in one hand, the body dangling there like a mannequin.
A quick glance around revealed a bench in front of a shop of some kind. Hazk handed the man Garen's sword.
“Sheath his blade and we’ll position him on that bench,” he said as he jerked his head at it. “Someone pour some whiskey on him and douse his clothing until he reeks of it. People will think he is drunk, and that will buy us some time.”
Reciprocity : Volume 1 of The Fledgegate Cycle Page 19