Less than a hundred strides from the wall and suddenly the black blobs on top of it were milling and running, confused shouts echoing up and adding to the cacophony of screaming civilians. Figures streamed away north and Mace’s step lightened; his second Thousand were making their approach.
He picked up the pace again, the gatehouse visible now. A Fifty headed straight for it and began hacking with axes while the rest flattened against the walls, out of eyeline unless the defenders leant right out over the battlements and presented themselves as targets to his archers. A few did and were shot, fell screaming. The rest kept their heads down, the volleys from both sides faltering.
Mace led his own Fifty to a point at the base of the wall where the torches were further apart. The defences were only twice the height of a man and it was easy enough for them to boost each other to the top, even in armour. The third Thousand were making a howling attack from the southern sward closest to the river, causing more confusion, diverting more attention.
Sailtown was nearly surrounded, the river the only way out now. And Dalli and her Wolves had the river.
Mace stepped into the stirrup formed of a man’s hands and threw himself upwards, armour dragging at his shoulders as he got his elbows over the top of the wall and scrabbled for purchase. A hand grabbed inside the neck of his breastplate and heaved, the leather straps and buckles straining. He rolled over the wall on to the allure, up to his feet and ran for the stairs down to the gatehouse.
There were three of them on the steps, Easterners all, blocking his way. He didn’t bother slowing, or doing anything much other than tensing as he kicked out at the first and caught him in the chest, the man’s sword too close to do much damage other than thwacking into Mace’s inner thigh blunt-edge first. Still bloody hurt though. The Easterner rocked back, missed his footing and was gone, felling the two behind, all three of them hurtling down the steps with a sound like someone throwing pots down a well.
Mace charged after them, dragging free his sword as he went. He leapt over one, clearly unconscious, and a second, very dead, his neck at an unnatural angle, and met the third’s sword with his own. This man was groggy and bleeding, but he was up and he was fast – would have been even faster if he weren’t so dizzy. Mace didn’t let him find his equilibrium, launching a flurry of attacks and forcing him back. The Easterner thrust and Mace slid his shoulder back out of range and then grabbed the blade in his gauntlet, hung on and chopped his own sword downwards, bludgeoning the man on to his knees and opening a deep gash in his shoulder.
Mace pulled on the weapon again, jerking him forward and exposing the back of his neck to his sword. He killed him, turned back and stabbed the still-unconscious Ranker at the base of the stairs. No time for mercy, and no desire for it either.
His men were nearly through the gatehouse with their axes, but Mace threw the bolts and heaved the crossbar free and the shattered remains swung inward, then pressed himself against the inner face of the wall as they streamed past, filing left and right for the storehouses and communal cellars, the key buildings and areas they needed to take and then hold. Enemies within and without; if the Easterners weren’t stupid, they’d see it was hopeless and surrender.
Mace suspected the Easterners would be stupid – or at least too afraid of the Red Gods to surrender without a fight.
Smoke was already drifting up from sections of the city and everywhere rang with the sounds of fierce fighting. Mace followed the last stragglers to clear the gate along the central street towards the town square. He’d left his shield at the bottom of the wall, so when a flight of arrows hissed down from the roofs, there was nothing he could do but tuck and run, slamming his shoulder into a door and through, falling into a large kitchen with a banked fire and narrowly avoiding being stabbed by a woman brandishing a filleting knife, standing between him and two small children.
‘Dancer’s grace,’ he gasped. ‘We’re here to help. Friendlies, friendlies!’
She sagged, all the fear and the fight rushing out of her. Then she pointed the blade up. ‘There’s men up there,’ she hissed, and that’s when Mace noticed the slave collar on her neck, and on the necks of her children. He went very cold. He’d known it, of course, known that that would be the fate of his countrymen when Rilporin fell, but he’d never actually seen it. Didn’t want to see it, and certainly not encircling the throats of children.
‘How many?’ he asked, barely recognising his own voice. She held up three fingers and he nodded, rolled his head on his neck. ‘Gate’s open,’ he whispered. ‘Get your little ones and get out. Run. Once we’ve secured the town you’ll be safe; until then this isn’t the best place for you. Any soldier you see who doesn’t greet you in the Dancer’s name’ – he crossed to her and lifted the hand holding the knife, placing it against his inner thigh, his armpit, the notch of his collarbone – ‘you aim for one of these. Understand?’
Her eyes were huge in the paleness of her face, her lower lip trembling, but she bit it hard and nodded, and the hand he held shook a little less. ‘Thank you.’
‘Go now. It’s going to get noisy in here.’
He waited until they’d slipped through the door and then took the stairs, step by stealthy step. The upper floor was divided into two luxurious bedchambers, and he had time to wonder whether this had been her property once, before the Easterners had taken up residence here and made her a slave in her own home.
Voices in the closest room, the one that would look down over the road. Mace drew in a deep and silent breath, adjusted his grip on his hilt, blinked away sweat and then barged inside.
The door gave too easily and he stumbled through, went sprawling so the man swinging the axe missed him, and so did the follow-up spear thrust from the room’s second occupant. Their bows and quivers were on the floor beneath the open window and Mace had a split second to acknowledge his luck that they’d tried to take him hand to hand instead of just shooting him as he entered, and then he was up on his knees and spinning to parry the axe, his blade thunking into the haft. He twisted his wrist and slid his sword over the man’s guard, got one foot planted and shoved forward. The tip just entered the middle of the man’s throat, not enough to kill him – not fast, anyway – but certainly enough to panic him; the axeman dropped his weapon, eyes goggling and both hands going to his neck. He gurgled and a faint red mist plumed in the air; Mace had nicked the windpipe. That’d do for now.
The spearman was good, so Mace hooked up the axe in his free hand and did his best to get inside the Easterner’s reach. It was almost impossible, and both of them knew it was just a matter of time. Mace backed slowly, senses straining around him for some advantage, a moment, an object, anything that would help. He was nearly at the window and about desperate enough to throw the axe and charge after it when the second Ranker gurgled again, louder and more urgent this time. Mace flicked his eyes over his opponent’s shoulder and widened them slightly. The ruse was enough – the spearman spun to the imagined threat behind him and Mace chopped through the back of his knee with the axe, then through the back of his neck as he fell.
He stepped over the dying man and killed the one he’d injured. She’d said there were three up here, the woman whose children wore chains. Mace took a deep breath, cuffed the sweat out of his eyes, and kicked open the next door, ducking in case of arrows.
What had been a rampage through the streets eventually became the sort of battle they were all familiar with. In Sailtown’s big assembly place, at least five hundred Southerners stood against almost the same from the East, lit in garish orange by fires, torches, burning thatch, burning wagons.
Dawn was a promise in the east as the superior numbers began to tell – Mace had hundreds more lining the roads to the square that he could rotate in whenever one of his fell. General Skerris, by contrast, had only the minimum number of soldiers to garrison the town and those civilians greedy enough or stupid enough to convert to the Red Joy in return for power and the removal of their collars.
As
if it had been ordained, the two officers came face to face in the melee. Mace had taken a shield from a dead Ranker and he snarled from behind it when he recognised Skerris’s huge bulk shoving through the line towards him.
‘You traitorous bastard,’ Mace yelled and swung. The first shattering clash of their blades had men on both sides of the conflict scrambling for cover and a space opened up around them, though to either side the battle raged on. Mace ignored the rest of the fighting, focusing only on Skerris and the ground and any Easterner who looked likely to try and stab him in the back. ‘Let’s dance, fucker.’
Skerris grinned, tucked as much of his bulk as he could behind his shield, and attacked. He came in low, then flicked his wrist at the last instant so that the blade arced up. Mace’s shield was dropping to cover his legs when the sword tip gouged across the top for his face. He slipped the blow, hoisting the shield to bat the blade up and away. It blocked his view of Skerris for a heartbeat and the general used it to ram his own shield rim-down on to Mace’s foot. There was the distinct crack of bone and pain shot up his shin.
Mace roared and thrust over the top of Skerris’s shield, his blade screeching off the general’s breastplate and skidding sideways into the inside of his elbow. Skerris hissed but the wound didn’t hinder him.
The East Rank general pulled back behind his shield, resetting for the next attack, and Mace copied him. He could hear renewed fighting to his right and left, but refused to let his focus be drawn, teeth gritted at the hot, throbbing agony in his boot.
He caught the slight shifting of weight that indicated the attack just before it came in hard and fast on Mace’s right side. He defended, feeling from the pressure in his blade that Skerris was trying to turn him, to get him side-on to the battle and expose his flank to the enemy. Mace resisted, stepping into the attack instead of away, closing down Skerris’s strokes before they were complete and forcing him into short, defensive parries.
Younger, fitter, Mace had Skerris on the run and only a few exchanges away from surrender or a killing stroke when a spear shot past the Easterner’s meaty shoulder and slammed into the top edge of Mace’s shield, splinters jagging up into his mouth and eyes, the spear itself stuck deep in the wood. A young lieutenant dashed to his side and offered his shield in its place. Mace threw his at Skerris, slipped his hand in the straps of the new one, and shoulder-barged the boy out of the way before he got skewered.
Mace slipped, his broken foot grating agony. He went to one knee. Saw Skerris’s attack coming, unstoppable.
The world slowed; his breath stopped. He could see the sweat on Skerris’s florid face, the rime of flame reflected on the edge of his sword as it arced downwards like solid lightning.
Mace shoved his shield up above his head and thrust in turn.
Skerris’s sword came down and metal screamed and wood shattered and Mace screamed too, bracing himself. Impact. The shock of it running through his sword arm as his blade slid up beneath the breastplate into the gut and on, all the way nearly to the hilt. Simultaneous shock through his left arm and the awful sound of a shield smashing apart and exposing him, leaving him defenceless.
And then stillness, the moment a perfect tableau.
A pause that lasted a lifetime before Skerris fell like a fucking tree, the crash and clatter of his over-sized armour and the thud of all that flesh smacking the stone enough to steal the heart from the nearest East Rankers and prove to Mace that he was still alive, at least for now.
He clambered to his feet, shaking the broken shield from his arm and wincing at the click in his elbow as soldiers leapt forward to protect him.
Skerris was bubbling blood out of his mouth, more of the same in a steady flood from beneath his breastplate. Mace contemplated letting him bleed to death and knew not even a traitor deserved that much pain. He put his sword tip on the fleshy throat.
Skerris bared red teeth. ‘My feet are on—’
Mace rammed the sword home, cutting off words and air and life, then slid it free and flicked the blood from its length. ‘Throw down your weapons,’ he bellowed through a raw, stinging throat. ‘Surrender and we’ll show you clemency. Resist and you’ll be cut down to the last man. Choose.’
The sun rose on a town devastated and burning and strewn with corpses – and on a town that was free.
Dozens of East Rankers and scores of townsfolk who’d converted had barricaded themselves into a ropewalk. Civilians, venturing from their homes as the battle raged in the centre of town, had surrounded the building and thrown lit torches on to its roof and into the bales of dry, inflammable hemp stacked outside and burnt them alive, beating to death any who tried to escape the flames.
But the losses weren’t all Easterners. Skerris had seeded the whole town with firing platforms, concealed alleys and traps, bigger and nastier than the leg-breakers outside the walls, and in the dark and the confusion they’d done their work too well. Mace didn’t know yet how many he’d lost, but it was more than he’d expected. More than he could afford.
But Corvus has lost his only Rank general. He’s lost hundreds of soldiers here, either dead or surrendered, and he’s lost the initiative, too. He’s lost the illusion of victory, of invincibility.
And I’ve finally won a fucking fight.
Mace snorted exhausted amusement. He sat on a water trough in the square, weary down to his very marrow and trying not to think about how many miles he had to walk on a broken foot. Townsfolk and soldiers were rounding up those Easterners who’d surrendered, and others were dragging forward more men – and a few women – who’d converted and been put in charge of working and punishing the slaves. When the town was lost, they’d thrown down their clubs and thrown themselves on their community’s mercy. As with the folk in the ropewalk, they were learning how much that mercy was worth.
Mace had the blacksmiths cutting off the slave collars as fast as they could, but if anything that was fuelling the people’s anger. No longer slaves, their need for vengeance burnt hot inside them. And Mace knew he couldn’t allow them to give in to it. He didn’t need a massacre here; he needed them to be Rilporian again.
But that meant the prisoners were his to punish and Mace had no idea what to do with them. In the heat of battle, yes, he knew what he was fighting for. When he’d sounded the all-out in the battle of the Blood Pass Valley, knowing he was ordering a Mireces massacre, he’d known then, too, that it was the right decision. Now, here, craving only food and sleep and something for the pain in his foot and side and elbow and every other bloody fucking body part, actually, he’d no idea what punishment to mete out to fellow Rilporians.
‘You best get used to it,’ Dalli said when he confessed. ‘As king you’ll be dispensing justice every day.’ She gusted a sigh and ran a filthy hand through her hair, then his, tidying it back from his brow. ‘So regal,’ she muttered and he managed a weak chuckle.
He sent for Hadir and then made his decision. ‘Do we have any priests here?’ he called. He wasn’t executing surrendered men, even if they did deserve it. ‘Priests of the Dancer? And any town elders too, please.’
Eventually a priest and two elders were found. Mace forced himself to stand and gave the old priest his seat: the man looked even more unsteady on his feet than Mace himself felt.
Best get straight to it. Hesitating won’t make them like it any more.
‘Elders, gather your people, gather your possessions – everything you can carry. Gather your livestock and harvest whatever you can. Make all haste for the abandoned town on Dancer’s Lake.’
The three of them gaped at him. ‘Impossible,’ a woman spluttered, though Hadir grunted his agreement and gave him an approving nod.
‘You have until dusk,’ Mace said. ‘I’m sorry, I know this is difficult, but we cannot spare the soldiers necessary to protect you. The Mireces will retake the town and enslave you again. They may execute every last one of you. Your only option is to leave.’
‘That’s impossible,’ the male elder e
choed. ‘We’ll never get everyone ready in time.’
‘The Rank will do all they can to assist you, but the order will be better accepted coming from you. Thank you.’
They gaped some more, but a couple of Rankers escorted them away, giving them no more chance to argue.
The priest was watching him in horror, no doubt fearing what it was he’d be asked to do. Mace tried for a reassuring smile; from the man’s reaction, it probably looked as strained as it felt. ‘Priest, I’d like you to do something for me, and for these benighted fools who were tricked into a false faith. I’d like you to save their souls.’
The old man pursed his lips and then sucked at his remaining teeth. ‘I can do that, but then what? Will you recruit them into your army or free them to prey on us as we flee?’
‘Neither. My Rank will collar and chain them much as you were and you will take them with you to Dancer’s Lake. They can dig the latrine pits and haul the wagons and carts, then labour to rebuild the town ready for winter, should this war drag on.’
He got another grunt from Hadir at that and felt a little better. ‘Feed them and water them, do not beat them. Treat them better than they treated you, and ensure your people do too. If I hear otherwise …’
The priest stood and peered up at Mace, and though his eyes were rheumy with age, he radiated approval. ‘Threats will not be necessary, Your Majesty, though they may not eat as well as the rest of us.’
‘Understood. And for those men who refuse the offer of redemption, place them into the custody of the Wolves over there. Though I hope there won’t be many.’
Because those are the ones I’ll have to execute.
‘And where are you going if you’re not staying to protect us?’ the old man asked.
‘To win the war,’ Mace replied and then waved him away. When they were alone, he looked at Dalli and Hadir; the wiry general had made it through the battle with little more than a strained shoulder. ‘Help anyone who needs it today and ensure they all leave by dusk, General. We’ll stay here tonight, leave at dawn tomorrow. I want to make sure none of the townsfolk try to return. And before we set out, burn the town and any crops that remain in the ground or stores in the barns. Leave nothing for the Mireces to utilise when they get here.’
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