Arrows stood from the armoured giants like forests of quills; they seemed to pay them no attention. They dropped their bronze spears straight down. The missiles wrought a horrific price among the clumped besiegers. Yet it looked to Jatal as though there were far more lines than defenders. Mercenaries now made the battlements atop the walls. Here they met the yakshaka, who cut them down as they came.
With attackers on the walls, the archers eased off. The Warleader barked a command and they roared their own growling throaty answer. They charged, adding their numbers to the assault.
Had this been an attack on any other wall in any other place with the attackers so outnumbering the defenders, Jatal imagined that the outcome would not have been in doubt. But these were armoured yakshaka guards. They swept the mercenaries from the walls. Cut them down with great blows of their two-handed blades. The attack appeared to be stalling.
Jatal spotted Scarza climbing a rope at one of the uncontrolled sections of wall. He rose hand over hand, his axe swinging at his back. Making the battlements, he charged for the front line. Jatal glimpsed him between crenellations, dodging and ducking as he made his way closer to the line of defenders. Then a yakshaka came tottering from the battlement, overbalanced, then fell in utter silence. It crashed to the ground, shattering upon the stone flags in an explosion like an enormous pot breaking.
An answering cheer arose from the mercenaries waiting their turn on the ropes.
Jatal again glimpsed the broad form of the Trell as he shouldered aside another of the defenders and straight-armed it over a low section of the crenellations. This one also fell in complete silence to burst like a dropped pot.
Do those things not even know fear? Jatal wondered. Why no scream or roar of protest?
Scarza charged the gatehouse tower. ‘He might just make it,’ Jatal murmured to the Warleader.
The mercenary was stroking his grizzled beard. ‘Scarza has never failed me,’ he answered, in the smug tone one might use when discussing a prized dog or horse.
That tone drove Jatal to flinch in distaste, only to realize: I am no better. He returned to studying the battle. Have I wronged you, foreigner?
The Warleader nodded to Andanii, who pulled her rapt gaze from the wall and jerked a curt answer. She turned on her mount to the marshalled Elites, yelled: ‘Ready to advance!’
Jatal thought her voice a touch too choked and shrill. Perhaps she had lost her taste for adventure and daring, now that the price to pay was so bitter. It occurred to him that their positions had seemingly reversed: he, once reluctant and fearful, was now completely open to whatever the day might bring.
They waited. Horses nickered their tension. Fittings jangled and rang. Jatal was surprised to find his breathing even. He glanced to Andanii and found her eyes on him; she quickly looked away. Checking my resolve? Searching for signs of fear? Today you’ll find none. Today we shall see who is truly weak.
I swear to that.
The foreign mercenaries kept climbing; by now most of the archers had gained the wall. Sounds of fighting echoed from within. Then the crash of cavalry reached them: it was distant, from elsewhere about the city. The Adwami tribes invading from all quarters. Jatal glimpsed pillars of smoke climbing into the sky over the low roofs.
The tall twin leaves of the gate shook as if from a great blow. Dust sifted down their iron-studded faces. They creaked and groaned, moving. Then slowly swung apart revealing Scarza and the cheering mercenaries.
The Warleader raised his arm. Andanii too thrust her arm high. He brought his swinging down like a scythe. She echoed the gesture. Jatal bellowed a war cry and heeled Ash into a gallop. He drew his sword and bent forward over Ash’s neck aiming the curved blade ahead.
The crash and reverberation of a storm of hooves marked the column following. He passed the narrow ditches, the litter of fallen men and horses. Ash jumped one dead Saar mount. Ahead, Scarza beckoned from the wide gate. Jatal’s heart hammered even louder than Ash’s hooves. What awaited them? The Warleader had said to make for the central complex.
A wide main approach faced Jatal. It was flanked by long buildings looking like dormitories or housing of some sort. As before at Isana Pura, the architecture offered almost no hint as to which buildings were more important than any other: all were low and uniform. A glimpse into the Thaumaturg mind and philosophy, of course. Following plain logic, Jatal urged Ash onward, making for the centre.
The approach ended at a wide set of stone stairs leading up to a broad columned building — a reception hall perhaps. Jatal yanked Ash to a halt and dismounted. Here, the first sign of violence within the gates offered itself. Corpses in dark robes lay sprawled on the stairs, black fluids dribbling like treacle. Ash flinched away, rearing and sounding his unease. The horrific stench raised Jatal’s gorge, yet despite this, or because of it, he climbed the stairs. His boots slipped and slid on the thick flowing mush. The corpses consisted of dead Thaumaturgs plus a few attacking shaduwam — the first he’d seen since Isana Pura. Like their brethren, these were mostly naked, filthy and unwashed. By their bent shattered bones and burst flesh, it looked as if their deaths had been as grotesque as they seemed to hope for. The Thaumaturgs, on the other hand, appeared to have succumbed to some sort of rotting curse: their bones lay still articulated by ligaments and sinew within their robes, yet mostly sloughed of all soft flesh. That flesh — skin, fat, muscle and organs — ran as a melted slush to spread from under the lips of their robes and sleeves and come seeping down the stairs in a broad red carpet.
Jatal pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and turned away. By all the gods of the world! He was leading Andanii into this? He glimpsed his bared sword and nearly laughed at the ridiculousness of the gesture. The Warleader had come up behind him. He surveyed the ghastly scene without a flicker of expression, though he did nod as if satisfied. ‘Good,’ he murmured. Then, advancing, gestured, this way.
The column fell in behind the Warleader. Jatal peered sidelong to Andanii. The Vehajarwi princess had paled to snow. She swallowed nervously and wiped her gleaming sweaty brow, her gaze darting everywhere.
Good, Jatal thought. Her conscience plagues her. She knows doubts — yet it is too late. Far too late.
More corpses littered the hall in smeared fluids. The warm humid air stank of excrement. Jatal stepped over the sprawled, obscenely flattened bodies. ‘The shaduwam appear to have won through,’ the Warleader observed.
Ahead, stairs descended into an interior sunken court surrounded by smaller, separate buildings. Statues bordered the court on all sides. These were the first depictions of the human form Jatal had seen from the Thaumaturgs: they were uniform, a figure bent in reflection, hands clasped, yet mouth open as if about to speak. The Warleader led the way down the stairs and across the court. Here were the bodies of several shaduwam. They lay contorted, hands at throats, their faces sculptures of agony. They had actually gouged bloody wounds at their necks with their own dirty broken nails. The sight made Jatal unbearably uneasy. Was this some sort of Thaumaturg curse?
As the leading element of the column reached the top of the opposite stairs, stones shifted behind in a loud grinding and Jatal spun. A mist gusted from the mouths of the surrounding statues in one long loud exhalation. The troopers caught in the sunken court, some thirty of them, clutched at their throats. Weapons clattered to the stones. Andanii lurched down the stairs as if she would rescue the nearest, but Jatal thrust an arm across her chest, stopping her. ‘They are dead already,’ he told her.