by Glen Cook
“We’re to strike camp and assemble on the pyramid.” A hundred questions buzzed like hornets. He said, “She wants us for bodyguards.”
“The Guard won’t like that,” I said. They did not like us anyway, having had to submit to the Captain’s orders at the Stair of Tear,
“Think they’ll give her a hard way to go, Croaker? Gents, the boss says go. So we go. You want to talk about it, do it while you’re breaking camp. Without the men hearing.”
For the troops this was great news. Not only would we be behind the worst fighting, we would be in a position to fall back into the Tower.
Was I that sure we were doomed? Did my negativism mirror a general attitude? Was this an army defeated before the first blow?
The comet was in the sky.
Considering that phenomenon while we moved, amidst animals being driven into the Tower, I understood why the Rebel had stalled. They had hoped to find their White Rose at the last minute, of course. And they had been waiting for the comet to attain a more auspicious aspect, its closest approach.
I grumbled to myself.
Raven, trudging beside me burdened with his own gear and a bundle belonging to Darling, grunted, “Huh?”
“They haven’t found their magic kid. They won’t have everything going their way.”
He looked at me oddly, almost suspiciously. Then, “Yet,” he said. “Yet.”
There was a big clamor as Rebel cavalry hurled javelins at sentinels on the palisade. Raven did not look back. It was just a probe.
We had a hell of a view from the pyramid, though it was crowded up there. “Hope we’re not stuck here long, I said. And, “Going to be hell treating casualties.”
The Rebel had moved his camps to within a half mile of the stockade. They blended into one. There was constant skirmishing at the palisade. Most of our troops had taken their places on the tiers.
The first level forces consisted of those who had served in the north, fleshed out by garrison troops from cities abandoned to the Rebel. There were nine thousand of them, divided into three divisions. The center had been assigned to Stormbringer, Had I been running things, she would have been on the pyramid hurling cyclones.
The wings were commanded by Moonbiter and Bonegnasher, two Taken I’d never encountered.
Six thousand men occupied the second level, also divided into three divisions. Most were archers from the eastern armies. They were tough, and far less uncertain than the men below them. Their commanders, from left to right, were: the Faceless or Nameless Man, the Howler, and Nightcrawler. Countless racks of arrows had been provided them. I wondered how they would manage if the enemy broke the first line.
The third tier was manned by the Guard at the ballistae, Whisper on the left with fifteen hundred veterans from her own eastern army, and Shifter on the right with a thousand westerners and southerners. In the middle, below the pyramid, Soulcatcher commanded the Guard and allies from the Jewel Cities. His troops numbered twenty-five hundred.
And on the pyramid was the Black Company, one thousand strong, with banners bright and standards bold and weapons ready to hand.
So. Roughly twenty-one thousand men, against more than ten times that number. Numbers aren’t always critical. The Annals recall many moments when the Company beat the odds. But not like this. This was too static. There was no room for retreat, for maneuver, and an advance was out of the question.
The Rebel got serious. The palisade’s defenders withdrew quickly, dismantling the spans across the three trenches. The Rebel did not pursue. Instead, he began demolishing the stockade.
“They look as methodical as the Lady,” I told Elmo.
“Yep. They’ll use the timber to bridge the trenches.”
He was wrong, but we would not learn that immediately.
“Seven days till the eastern armies get here,” I muttered at sunset, glancing back at the huge, dark bulk of the Tower. The Lady had not come forth for the initial scrimmage.
“More like nine or ten,” Elmo countered. “They’ll want to get here all together.”
“Yeah. Should’ve thought of that.”
We ate dried food and slept on the earth. And in the morning we rose to the bray of Rebel trumpets.
The enemy formations stretched as far as the eye could see. A line of mantlets started forward. They had been built from timber scavenged from our palisade. They formed a moving wall stretched across the pie-slice. The heavy ballistae thumped away. Large trebuchets hurled stones and fireballs. The damage they did was inconsequential.
Rebel pioneers began bridging the first trench, using timber brought from their camps. The foundations for these were huge beams, fifty feet long, impervious to missile fire. They had to use cranes to position them. They exposed themselves while assembling and operating the devices. Well-ranged Guard engines made that expensive.
Where the palisade had stood Rebel engineers were assembling wheeled towers from which bowmen could shoot, and wheeled ramps to roll up to the first tier. Carpenters were making ladders. I saw no artillery. I guess they planned to swamp us once they crossed the trenches.
The Lieutenant knew siegework well. I went to him. “How they going to bring up those ramps and towers?”
“They’ll fill the ditches.”
He was right. As soon as they had bridges across the first, and started moving mantlets over, carts and wagons appeared, carrying earth and stone. Teamsters and animals took a beating. Many a corpse went into the fill.
The pioneers moved up to the second trench, assembled their cranes. The Circle gave them no armed support. Stormbringer sent archers to the lip of the final trench. The Guard laid down heavy fire with the ballistae. The pioneers suffered heavy casualties. The enemy command simply sent more men.
The Rebel began moving mantlets across the second trench an hour before noon. Wagons and carts crossed the first, carrying fill.
The pioneers encountered withering fire moving up to bridge the final ditch. The archers on the second tier sped their shafts high. They fell nearly straight down. The trebuchets shifted their aim, blasting mantlets into toothpicks and timbers. But the Rebel kept coming. On Moonbiter’s flank they got a set of supporting beams across.
Moonbiter attacked, crossing with a picked force. His assault was so ferocious he drove the pioneers back over the second trench. He destroyed their equipment, attacked again. Then the Rebel command brought up a strong heavy infantry column. Moonbiter withdrew, leaving the second trench bridges ruined.
Inexorably, the Rebel bridged again, moved to the final trench with soldiers to protect his workmen. Stormbringer’s snipers retreated.
The arrows from the second tier fell like flakes in a heavy winter snow, steadily and evenly. The carnage was spectacular. Rebel troops rolled into the witch’s cauldron in a flood. A river of wounded flowed out. At the last trench the pioneers began keeping to the shelter of their mantlets, praying those would not be shattered by the Guard.
Thus it stood as the sun settled, casting long shadows across the field of blood. I’d guess the Rebel lost ten thousand men without bringing us to battle.
Through that day neither the Taken nor the Circle unleashed their powers. The Lady did not venture out of the Tower.
One less day to await the armies of the east.
Hostilities ended at sunset. We ate. The Rebel brought another shift to work the trenches. The newcomers went at it with the gusto their predecessors had lost. The strategy was obvious. They would rotate fresh troops in and wear us down.
The dark was the time of the Taken. Their passivity ended.
I could see little initially, so cannot for certain say who did what. Shifter, I suspect, changed shape and crossed into enemy territory.
The stars began to fade behind onrushing storm clouds. Cold air rushed across the earth. The wind rose, howled. Riding it came a horde of things with leathery wings, flying serpents the length of a man’s arm. Their hissing overshadowed the tumult of the storm. Thunder crashed and
lightning stalked, jabbing enemy works with its spears. The flashes revealed the ponderous advance of giants from the rock wastes. They hurled boulders the way children throw balls. One snatched up a bridge beam and used it as a two-handed club, smashing siege towers and ramps. The look of them, in the treacherous light, was of creatures of stone, basaltic rubble cobbled together in grotesque, gargantuan parody of the human form.
The earth shivered. Patches of plain glowed a bilious green. Radiant ten-foot, blood-streaked orange worms slithered amongst the foe. The heavens opened and dumped rain and burning brimstone.
The night coughed up more horrors. Killing fogs. Murderous insects. A beginning glow of magma such as we had seen at the Stair of Tear. And all this in just minutes. Once the Circle responded, the terrors faded, though some it took hours to neutralize. They never took the offensive. The Taken were too strong.
By midnight all was quiet. The Rebel had given up everything but fill work at the far trench. The storm had become a steady rain. It made the Rebel miserable but did him no harm. I wriggled down amongst my companions and fell asleep thinking how nice it was that our part of the world was dry.
Dawn. First view of the Taken’s handiwork. Death everywhere. Horribly mutilated corpses. The Rebel labored till noon cleaning up. Then he resumed his assault on the trenches.
The Captain received a message from the Tower. He assembled us. “Word is, we lost Shifter last night.” He gave me a look meant to be significant. “The circumstances were questionable. We’ve been told to stay alert. That means you, One-Eye. And you, Goblin and Silent. You send a yell to the Tower if you see anything suspicious. Understand?” They nodded.
Shapeshifter gone. That must have taken some doing.
“The Rebel lose anybody important?” I asked.
“Whiskers. Roper. Tamarask. But they can be replaced. Shifter can’t.”
Rumors floated around. The deaths of members of the Circle had been caused by some catlike beast so strong and quick even the powers of its victims were of no consequence. Several score senior Rebel functionaries had fallen victim as well.
The men recalled a similar beast from Beryl. There were whispers. Catcher had brought the forvalaka over on the ship. Was he using it against the Rebel?
I thought not. The attack fit Shifter’s style. Shifter loved sneaking into the enemy camp.…
One-Eye went around wearing a thoughtful look, so self-engrossed he bumped into things. Once he stopped and smashed a fist into a ham hanging near the newly erected cook tents.
He had it figured out. How Catcher could send the forvalaka into the Bastion to slaughter the Syndic’s entire household, and end up controlling the city through a puppet, through no cost to the Lady’s overextended resources. Catcher and Shifter were thick then, weren’t they?
He had figured out who killed his brother—too late to exact revenge.
He went around and beat on that ham several times during the course of the day.
I joined Raven and Darling later. They were watching the action. I checked Shapeshifter’s force. His standard had been replaced. “Raven. Isn’t that Jalena’s banner?”
“Yes.” He spat.
“Shifter wasn’t a bad guy. For one of the Taken.”
“None of them are. For Taken, As long as you don’t get in their way.” He spat again, eyed the Tower. “What’s going on here, Croaker?”
“Eh?” He was as civil as he had been since our return from the field.
“What’s this show all about? Why is she doing it this way?”
I was not sure what he was asking. “I don’t know. She doesn’t confide in me.”
He scowled. “No?” As though he did not believe me! Then he shrugged. “Be interesting to find out.”
“No doubt.” I watched Darling. She was inordinately intrigued by the attack. She asked Raven a stream of questions. They were not simple. You might expect their like from an apprentice general, a prince, someone expected to assume eventual command.
“Shouldn’t she be somewhere safer?” I asked. “I mean.…”
“Where?” Raven demanded. “Where would she be safer than with me?” His voice was hard, his eyes narrow with suspicion. Startled, I dropped the subject.
Was he jealous because I had become Darling’s friend? I don’t know. Everything about Raven is strange.
Stretches of the farther trench had vanished. In places the middle trench had been filled and tamped. The Rebel had moved his surviving towers and ramps up to the extreme limit of our artillery. New towers were abuilding. New mantlets were everywhere. Men huddled behind every one.
Braving merciless fire, Rebel pioneers bridged the final trench. Counterattacks stalled them again and again, yet they kept coming. They completed their eighth bridge about the third hour after noon.
Vast infantry formations moved forward. They swarmed across the bridges, into the teeth of the arrowstorm. They hit our first line randomly, pelting in like sleet, dying against a wall of spears and shields and swords. Bodies piled up. Our bowmen threatened to fill the ditches around the bridges. And still they came.
I recognized a few banners seen at Roses and Lords. The elite units were coming up.
They crossed the bridges and formed up, advanced in fair order, exerted heavy pressure on our center. Behind them a second line formed, stronger, deeper, and broader. When it was solid its officers moved it forward a few yards, had their men crouch behind their shields.
Pioneers moved mantlets across, joined them in a sort of palisade. Our heaviest artillery concentrated on these. Behind the ditch, hordes ran fill to selected points.
Though the men on the bottom level were our least reliable—I suspect the lottery was rigged—they repelled the Rebel elite. Success gave them only a brief respite. The next mass attacked.
Our line creaked. It might have broken had the men had anywhere to run. They had the habit of fleeing. But here they were trapped, with no chance of getting up the retaining wall.
That wave receded. On his end Moonbiter counterattacked and routed the enemy before him. He destroyed most of their mantlets and briefly threatened their bridges. I was impressed by his aggressiveness.
It was late. The Lady had not come forth. I suppose she had not doubted we would hold. The enemy launched a last assault, a human wave attack, that came within a whisper of swamping our men. In places the Rebel reached the retaining wall and tried to scale or dismantle it. But our men did not collapse. The incessant rain of arrows broke the Rebel determination.
They withdrew. Fresh units filled in behind the mantlets. A temporary peace settled in. The field belonged to their pioneers.
“Six days,” I said to no one in particular. “I don’t think we can hang on.”
The first line shouldn’t survive tomorrow. The horde would storm the second level. Our archers were deadly as archers, but I doubted they would do well hand-to-hand. Moreover, once forced into close combat they could no longer punish the enemy coming up. Then the Rebel towers would do them as they had been done.
We had cut a narrow trench near the rear of the pyramid top. It served as our latrine. The Captain caught me at my most inelegant. “They need you down on the bottom level, Croaker, Take One-Eye and your crew,”
“What?”
“You’re a physician, aren’t you?”
“Oh,” Silly of me. Should have known I could not remain an observer.
The rest of the Company went down too, to perform other tasks.
Getting down was no trouble, though traffic was heavy on the temporary ramps. Men from the upper level and pyramid top hauled munitions down to the bowmen (the Lady must have squirreled arrows for a generation), brought corpses and casualties up.
“Be a good time to jump us,” I told One-Eye. “Just scamper up the ramps.”
“They’re too busy doing the same things we are.” We passed within ten feet of Soulcatcher. I lifted a hand in tentative greeting. He did the same after a pause, I got the feeling he was startle
d.
Down we went, and down again, into Stormbringer’s territory.
It was hell down there. Every battlefield is, after, but never had I seen anything like this. Men were down everywhere. Many were Rebels our men hadn’t the energy to finish. Even the troops from up top just booted them aside so they could collect our people. Forty feet away, ignored, Rebel soldiers were gathering their own people and ignoring ours. “It’s like something out of the old Annals,“ I told One-Eye. “Maybe the battle at Torn.”
“Torn wasn’t this bloody.”
“Uhm.” He was there. He went back a long way.
I found an officer and asked where we should set up shop. He suggested we’d be the most use to Bonegnasher.
Going, we passed uncomfortably near Stormbringer, One-Eye’s amulet burned my wrist.
“Friend of yours?” One-Eye asked sarcastically.
“What?”
“Such a look you got from the old spook.”
I shuddered. Lime thread. Taken the wind. That could have been Stormbringer.
Bonegnasher was a big one, bigger than Shifter, eight feet tall and six hundred pounds of iron mean muscle. He was so strong it was grotesque. He had a mouth like a crocodile, and supposedly had eaten his enemies in the old days. A few of the old stories also call him Bonecrusher, because of his strength.
White I stared, one of his lieutenants told us to go out to the far right flank, where fighting had been so light no medical team had yet been assigned.
We located the appropriate battalion commander. “Set up right here,” he told us. “I’ll have the men brought to you.” He looked sour.
One of his staff volunteered, “He was a company commander this morning. It was hard on officers today.” When you have heavy casualties among your officers, they are leading from the front to keep the men from breaking.
One-Eye and I started patching. “Thought you had it easy over here.”
“Easy is relative.” He looked at us hard, talking about easy when we had spent the day loafing on the pyramid.
Torchlight medicine is a bunch of fun. Between us we treated several hundred men. Whenever I paused to work the pain and stiffness out of my hands and shoulders, I glanced at the sky, perplexed. I had expected the Taken to go crazy again tonight.