by Ted Neill
“Indeed, for she makes me a better man.”
Gail nodded and punched him in the shoulder. It was what another “man” would do, she imagined. She had a part to play after all. As the sun set, turning the sky the colors of blood and fire, she found herself wandering down the length of the rampart. While soldiers ate their evening meal, drank tea brewed from herbs and grasses, and chatted with each other, she was silent, running over the conversation she had had with Celine. Somehow, quite accidently, she found herself on the stairs halfway between the bailey and the top of the battlements, sitting alone, except for the ghosts of Billy and Daisy, present beside her in the letters just under her foot.
Daisy eats mud pies.
Billy kisses dog lips.
Daisy loves Strommer
Billy loves Heather
Daisy loves Jules
Billy loves dogs
Daisy loves dog shite
Billy loves to eat cow dung
Daisy loves old farmer Fats
She drew out a knife, one of the knives she had carried all the way from the Morbright mines. It had been carried by one of the dead men she had pilfered. Whether he had been one of her father’s men or Sade and Vondales,’ she could not remember. She didn’t care, except to hope that the blade served a more noble purpose now as she twisted its point into the wood and carved three more lines.
Billy loves Daisy
Daisy loves Billy
Forever
Chapter 30
The Siege
Kevin was right, the attack came at dawn. It was no surprise since it was impossible not to see the ranks of Maurvant foot soldiers gathering. They were a great innumerable mass, but strangely enough, there rose no siege towers, no catapults, or other machines for attacking the walls of a city. But they had numbers. The small raiding parties were gone, swallowed up now by thousands of infantry. That so many lived in the arid steps or even the lands beyond, Gail had never imagined. It felt as if half the world stood ready to storm the city.
Then the lines were surging forward. The sound of horns and drums were drowned out by the cries of men, cries that were reminiscent of the crashing sea or a storm-borne wind. In an instant the waiting was over, the lethargy, the tedium of the previous weeks evaporated, replaced with an acute alertness, an aliveness that Gail would have welcomed had it not come on the cusp of inevitable violence and death.
King Talamar rode with his Antan cavalry down to the main gate to reinforce the Karrithians there. Rangers and soldiers lined up along the shield wall nailed to the wooden rampart alongside Gail. Whether they had been just roused from slumber or they had been awake all night on a shift, they all stared out with eyes wide, jaws set. A young soldier vomited, then another. No one took notice, except perhaps Gail.
“Steady Alex,” Darid said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Ready your bow.”
She did, but there was no use just yet. The surge of fighters was still approaching the city walls; on the castle walls they were still too far removed to engage. So they watched. The surge splintered into three fronts, like a three-pronged pitchfork hurled at the city. The central ranks converged on the western-facing main gate where Talamar and his men had just ridden. The other two flanks split in opposite directions for the city’s north and south corners where the walls met the stout drum towers. Gail did not understand this strategy. The gate was the only way in through the walls and the drum towers were well defended.
“Is it just a diversion?” she asked aloud, but no one was able to offer an opinion. Instead they watched in horror as the Maurvant surrounded the towers—waves enveloping a rock—and began to climb. The tower walls offered few footholds, even fewer handholds and their defenders rained down projectiles, but the Maurvant had numbers that were too great. They swarmed the base, the mass of bodies too thick. Chaos turned to order as ranks of men lifted one another, building upon their bodies, feet on shoulders, forming human pyramids that grew in height until the first raiders were at the level of the balustrades and soon were slipping through. The defenders, unprepared for such an assault, were overrun, the sound of clashing steel and war cries reaching across the city streets and over rooftops to the castle walls.
“The distraction is the attack at the gate,” Darid said. “They never intended to take it.”
Now the Maurvant’s strategy was laid bare: take the towers, sweep down the city walls making a direct route around the defenses mounted in the lower city, and stage an attack on the castle mount itself. It was unorthodox and bold and completely in keeping with their tactics thus far. Gail cursed herself for not anticipating as much. But perhaps Darid had, for it had been his insistence that they raise the castle walls with the hoardings in the first place, as if he had known it would come down to a battle not for the city, but for the castle proper.
“Ready yourselves men,” Darid called out. Archers nocked arrows, others readied rocks and slings, and cauldrons of oil. The Maurvant made their way down the walls like poison flowing through veins to the heart. When they were even with the castle hill and beyond the fortifications of the lower city, they rappelled down on ropes they had carried with them, dashed through the abandoned streets and winding alleyways, making their way to the castle. In the courtyard below all was eerie silence, as King Oean waited, his shining armor oversized on his weakened and hunched frame. It was a display but it was not worthless. The sight of him, waiting with his ranks of green-clad men was heartening—Gail knew—to the men on the walls. Yet it was a gamble, too. If the inner gates of the castle fell, then the king would be waiting, vulnerable just on the other side. Granted his men surrounded him, ten companies at least, but these were gray beards, experienced men, but past their prime . . . the best fighters having been sent to the city walls.
“We have to hold the wall,” Darid said as if reading her thoughts once more. “Don’t wait for my command. Loose your arrows, throw your rocks once you see a target.”
Gail obeyed. The moment she saw her first raider, leather and fur clad, face painted as in the canyon battle, a necklace of bones bouncing around his neck, she shot an arrow and caught him under the arm. Another followed and another. The rampart sang with the twang of bowstrings and the swish of arrows. It was a dark and lethal rain that poured down on the Maurvant. Soon the ground was littered with bodies and arrows.
But still the numbers proved too many. For every well-aimed arrow and fallen barbarian, three more stepped forward. There was no shortage of targets as the Maurvant filled the streets below and pressed up against the walls. Now the barrage of rocks—cobblestones, pieces of wall, boulders from creek beds—began as the soldiers tossed their missiles down, catching raiders in the head with splatters of bright red blood or the crack of bone. Yet still the Maurvant came, their numbers swelling. They were no longer distant figures or an indistinct wave of bodies. They were individuals with beards, scars, and sweat-streaked muscles, panting, howling, and grunting as they forced their way into a city that was not their own. Gail hated them and she read the same fierce determination in the Karrithians beside her. Karrith was a home that belonged to all of them that morning and they fought like it.
The hoardings served their purpose and Gail felt no shortage of pride as the Maurvant attempted to scale the castle walls in the same fashion as they had the city walls, only to be denied by the overhang of the rampart which added not just height but a ledge to climb. It proved an impassable angle for even their most acrobatic climbers. A few came as close as wrapping a hand around the edge of the shield wall but defenders waited there, ready with sword, ax, and hammer and sent the unlucky attackers plummeting into their comrades below.
The defenders were growing in their confidence, the first attack well repelled. The soldiers beat their weapons on the shield wall and called out taunts to the enemy below.
“Pissants!”
“Dogs!”
“Bastards!”
“Steady . . . .” Darid growled, his voice even and low, for he saw th
e next attack coming. Gail could feel her heart beating in her temples, her body was drenched in sweat, her arms and fingers aching from shooting one arrow after another. She pulled a loose strand of hair plastered to her forehead and ran it back over her head. By instinct she stretched her hand back to smooth out a ponytail that was no longer there. She dropped her hand instead to her quiver to clutch her arrows. A handful left. She would have to be judicious with them, then she would fling rocks and swing her sword with the others.
The Maurvant were adapting. Although their numbers were thinned by the barrage from the castle walls, they formed up into tight bunches, their shields interlocking. Now it was the work of the soldiers with the hot oil to pour it down on the shell of shields. Men screamed below, but for each shield that dipped or fell, another closed the gap around it, denying Gail a clear shot at the tangle of bodies beneath.
“Shite!” she cursed as the shields on one cluster parted before she could react and Maurvant archers sent fire arrows streaking overhead to land in the bare earth of the courtyard—the cobblestones having been removed to be used as projectiles from the castle walls. The first fire arrows fell harmlessly but others struck rooftops of the noble’s houses and the thatch covering began to smolder. The king’s guard of gray beards moved with urgency to douse the flames, eager to engage in the fight in any way they could.
Let’s hope that is all they have to do this day, Gail thought.
More arrows flew overhead leaving trails of smoke against the blue morning sky. A clear day for the gods to see the conflict below. Gail drew back her bow string, staring down the shaft of an arrow at the roof of shields below, waiting for another opening. One appeared and her bow string thwanged as she let the arrow fly. It slipped just inside the rim of a shield but she was unsure if it struck true in the darkness underneath.
Then a light flared, this one distinct for it was more yellow than the red-orange flames that had rippled on the ends of the fire arrows so far. This yellow fire arrow she saw lifting skyward was pointed directly at the wooden ramparts, the flame tinged with green, burning with some chemical concoction that the Maurvant had prepared for this purpose. The bow string snapped forward. Others followed. These arrows with the yellow-green flames struck the wooden struts of the shield wall. In an instant, a blue flame raced over the timbers and the wood took light.
Soldiers unlucky enough to be too close to the pop of flame were quickly wrapped in tongues of fire themselves . . . screaming and waving their limbs, which only fed the feathers of fire. The other soldiers stood by, struck helpless by the unexpected turn, the ferocity of the flames, the immediacy by which it engulfed boards, joists, braces, shields, and men alike.
A few quick thinking men moved to beat the flames with their cloaks but the fire proved too insidious, the cloaks caught fire and their very shaking simply spread more drops of fire throughout the wooden frame of the hoardings. The rampart was soon consumed, the men rushing about in chaos. The wood that had been their defense had been turned against them as fuel for their destruction.
“Abandon the walls!” came the cry. Had Darid said it first? She was not sure but he had taken up the cry as his own now. Men bunched on the steps and ladders. Others leapt to the rooftops below, their smoldering clothes lighting more thatched roofs aflame. Now nobles and other civilians who had hoped to hide in the safety of the castle were all taking up buckets of water from the wells . . . but the ranks of soldiers were not coordinated with them. Packs of well-intentioned lords and ladies collided with gray beards. Curses rose from the tumult as well as desperate commands from officers struggling to impress order. Oean’s horse backed up, its eyes rolling, its ears flat, and the old man pulling on the reins to keep it from rearing.
The soldiers in the courtyard were panicked when they needed to be squaring their ranks and reinforcing the gate. The Maurvant, as if they knew of the very chaos that they had sown, moved forward to the castle gate where they began to bludgeon it with axes, clubs, and mallets. Darid waved back flames as he leaned over the shield wall to watch the advance of the Maurvant. The gate would not hold and the defenders were now in complete disarray.
“We’re lost!” Gail said, the heat of the flames causing her to wince. The rampart was nearly empty now, given over to the inferno, but like a captain on a sinking ship, Darid remained atop and so Gail did as well, waiting for his command to release her. It did not come. Instead he said,
“They will breach the gate. We have to stop them.”
“How?”
Darid sheathed his sword, ran across the smoking boards and picked up a war hammer abandoned by a retreating soldier. He stepped along the shield wall and swung it into a strut. The strut splintered apart and the boards under their feet shifted. Darid pointed to another strut like the one he had just smashed and another. They ran in a line a few steps apart down the length of the rampart.
“Start smashing,” he said, turning and making his way south along the wall. Gail hurried to obey, picking up a mace. Its handle was hot and scorched her hand but there was no time to let it cool. She spat on her palm, gripped the weapon, crying out against the pain, and started running north. The heat of her weapon matched her own fury and she swung it with abandon into the first strut. The shock traveled up her arm into her shoulder with such pain she nearly fell over backwards. She gripped her shoulder but was rewarded with the sight of the strut buckling, the boards shifting under her feet.
They would drop the rampart on the Maurvant and turn their flames against them.
She sprinted down the length of the hoardings, stepping over dead soldiers, kicking away abandoned gear, and putting all of her body’s momentum into each swing. The wood was scaling black all around her from the heat. She smelled her own hair burning, but she still pressed on, the skin of her face blistering, the sleeves of her tunic smoking. The Maurvant numbers were thick against the gate below. She was a bird on a damn about to break.
“Hold on just a bit longer,” she prayed to the gate as if the gods that governed it or spirits that inhabited it—imagined or no—might indeed be real and perform the miracle so needed.
The rampart groaned and slipped with a chorus of cracking boards and rising cinders. Gail was sure she was going over with it but its fall was arrested. She heard more pounding on the gate. More screams as fires spread on the insides of the castle. She was out of struts to strike. The hoardings ended. It was impossible to see the far side for the flames. She swung the mace once more, burying the spiked head in the back of a shield, sending it downward just for good measure, before she turned, took a running start, and leapt into the air, plummeting into the courtyard below.
Chapter 31
The Battle for Karrith
Gail crashed through a thatched rooftop, bounced between rafters, and landed on a bed, sheets billowing up around her, the slats and legs breaking so that the mattress plopped flat on the floor.
She lay still, waiting for the wave of pain to take her. It did, like a body-wide ache. She fought to move her feet even if she could not feel them just yet and was relieved to hear her boots scrape against the footboard of the bed. The effort caused new bolts of pain to travel up her back and make her body shiver. She part-coughed, part-choked, rocking her head backwards. Above her she could see the hole her body had punched through the roof and the clouds of smoke rising from the burning rampart. Soot alighted on the edge of the hole and squawked but a whimper in the room—a whimper or a cry—brought her attention to her immediate surroundings.
A boy was standing beside the bed, his expression a mixture of terror and determination, his eyes wide, his jaw set as he raised the prongs of a pitchfork at her. Behind him was—presumably—his mother, her arms wrapped around two smaller children, a girl and a boy. He was too young to fight on the front lines yet Gail had sent boys even younger than he into battle. He and his family had taken refuge in this top floor room, probably expecting to be safe, probably not expecting herself to come crashing through the ceilin
g. But here she was, winded and helpless.
She could not even catch her breath to say, “No,” and to claim to be on the same side as the frightened people. In the end she did not need to. Proceeded by the pounding of footsteps, the door to the bedroom crashed open and Darid burst forth into the room.
“Wait! He’s one of us.”
The mother screamed but then called to her son, “Peter, stop!”
The boy froze, just short of running Gail through at the neck. Darid moved him aside, one hand on his shoulder, the other on the pitchfork. The boy was trembling.
“Stand down. He’s my squire.”
Gail moved to prop herself up on her elbow but immediately fell backwards. Darid knelt beside her, his face blackened with ash, his clothes charred and smoking.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“So do you. Can you walk?”
“I think so,” she said, trying to sit up again. She was successful this time. The respite she had hoped for was short-lived as Darid pulled her to her feet by her arm and said, “Come, they’ll need us in the courtyard.”
“Yes . . . sir,” she managed to say. She staggered past the boy and down the steps after Darid.
“It would have been ironic had you survived the rampart and the fall only to be killed by a boy.”
Fitting is more like it, she thought.
But this was not yet her hour to perish. The fighting would go on. She stumbled through the door of the house into the courtyard lost to chaos: Men, women, and children rushed about to extinguish fires. A few soldiers were bracing the splintering gate, but hardly enough. King Oean was trying to rally his gray beards, his face bright red beneath his snow-white beard, but his voice was lost amid the clamor. Darid stopped on the steps of the house as they left, looking up. Gail could feel the heat of the burning rampart. It had slipped from its moorings and was twisted like an old crone’s spine. Boards buckled in the heat. Sparks spun into the air on updrafts.