The words dragged from her, one by one. "Since Harvas was wiling to stand siege, I sought to spy, to seek—aye, to sneak— from his mind how he aimed to answer us when the time came. I did not plan to confront him directly; had I done so, I would now be lying dead in my tent. I came near enough to that as it was."
She paused to rest again. Krispos poured her a cup of wine. She seemed a little restored after she drank it. Her voice was stronger as she went on, "Even entering the corners of that mind is like tiptoeing through a maze of death. He has shields and spike-filled snares in his head, snares beyond counting. Be thankful you are mindblind, dear Krispos, that you never need to touch such evil. I made myself very small, hoping he would not notice me ..." Tears ran down her cheeks. She did not seem to know they were there. "What did you do?" Krispos asked again. "I found what I sought. Were Harvas less arrogant, less sure of himself, he would have caught me no matter what I did. But down deep, he will not believe any mere mortal truly able to challenge him. And so, beneath his notice, I found what he intended—and I fled."
Of themselves, Krispos' hands curled into fists. "And what is waiting for us?" he demanded.
"Fire." Tanilis answered. "I know not how—nor did I stay to try to learn—but Harvas has made the city wall of Pliskavos a great reservoir of flame. At his will or signal, the wall can be ignited. Most likely he would wait until our men are on it everywhere, perhaps beginning to drop down into Pliskavos. Then he could burn those on the wall and climbing up it, and also trap the intrepid souls who aimed to take the fight farther."
"But he'd burn the defenders on the wall, too," Krispos said. "Would he care?" Tanilis asked brutally. "No," Krispos admitted, "not if they served his purpose. It would, too—he wouldn't have to have many Halogai up there, just enough to slow us, to make us think we were overpowering them because of our might. And then—" He did not want to think about "and then," not so soon after watching what the dromons' invincible fire did to dugout canoes and men.
"Exactly so," Tanilis said. "You see you must delay the attack, then, until our mages devise some suitable countermeasure to abate the menace of this—"
"Hold on," Krispos said. Tanilis tried to continue. He shook his head at her. "Hold on," he repeated, more sharply this time. A couple of ideas rattled around in his head. If he could bring them together ... He did, with almost an audible click. His eyes widened. "Suppose we lit the wall first," he whispered. "What then?"
Fatigue fell from Tanilis like a discarded cloak as she surged to her feet. "Yes, by the lord with the great and good mind!" She and Krispos hugged, not so much like lovers as like conspirators who realized they'd hatched the perfect plot.
Krispos stuck his head out of the tent. Geirrod came to smart attention. "Never mind that," Krispos said. "Get me Mammianos and then get me Kanaris."
Drawn up in full battle array, the imperial army ringed the entire landward perimeter of Pliskavos. Horns and drums and pipes whipped the soldiers toward full martial fury. The men shouted Krispos' name and bellowed abuse and threats at the Halogai on the walls.
The Halogai roared back, crying defiance to the sky. "Come on, little men, try us!" one shouted. "We make you littler still!" He threw his axe high in the air and caught it with a flourish.
Siege engines bucked and snapped. Stones and great darts flew toward Pliskavos. Engineers returned the machines' throwing arms to their proper positions, checked ropes, reloaded, then hauled on windlasses to tighten the cordage to the point where the engines could cast again. Meanwhile archers skipped forward to add their missiles to those of the catapults.
Not many Halogai were bowmen; the fighting they reveled in was hand to hand. Those who had bows shot back. A couple of Videssians fell; more northerners tumbled from the wall. The main body of imperial troops shouted and made as if to surge toward the wall. The Halogai roared back.
Krispos watched all that from the riverbank west of Pliskavos. It was a fine warlike display, with banners flying and polished armor gleaming under the morning sun. He hoped Harvas found it as riveting as he did himself. If all the wizard's attention focused there, he would pay no heed to the pair of dromons now gliding up the Astris toward his town.
With their twin banks of oars, thirty oars to a bank, the war galleys reminded Krispos of centipedes striding over the water. Such smooth motion seemed impossible. As with anything else, it came by dint of endless practice. .
Closer and closer to the quays at the bottom of the wall came the two dromons. Krispos watched the marines who were busy at their bows. A few Halogai watched, too, watched and jeered. A whole fleet of dromons might have carried enough warriors to attack Pliskavos from the river. Two were no threat.
Aboard each vessel, an officer raised his hand, then let it fall. The marines at the hand pumps swing their handles up and down, up and down. Twin sheets of flame belched from the wood-and-bronze siphon tubes. The quays caught at once. Black smoke shot skyward. Then the flames splashed against the wall.
For most of a minute, as the marines aboard the dromons kept pumping out their incendiary mixture, Krispos could not tell whether Tanilis had stolen the truth from Harvas' mind, whether his own scheme could disrupt the wizard's plan. Then the tubs of firemix went dry. The fiery streams stopped pouring from the siphons. The wall still burned.
Slowly at first, then quicker and quicker, the flames spread. The dromons backed oars to get away from a conflagration greater than any they were intended to confront. The Halogai atop the river wall poured buckets of water down onto the fire. It kept burning, kept spreading. The Halogai poured again, with no better luck. Krispos saw them stare down, the images of their bodies wavering through heat-haze. Then they gave up and ran away.
The flames were already running as fast as a man could. They burned a brilliant yellow, brighter and hotter than the orange-red fire that had spawned them. They reached the top of the wall and threw themselves high into the air, as if in play.
"By the good god," Krispos whispered. He sketched Phos' sun-sign. At the same time, he narrowed his eyes against the growing glare from Pliskavos. His face heated, as if he were standing in front of a fireplace. So he was, but several hundred yards away.
Halogai ran all along the wail now, even where the flames had not yet reached. Their terrified shouts rose above the crackle and hiss of the fire. Then the flames that had gone one way around Pliskavos met those that had gone the other, and there was nowhere to run anymore. Harvas' city was a perfect ring of fire.
The wall itself burned with a clean, almost smokeless flame. Before long, though, smoke did start rising up from inside Pliskavos—and no wonder, Krispos thought. By then he had already moved back from the fire twice. Houses and other buildings could not move back. So close to so much heat, they had to ignite, too.
Kanaris came up to Krispos. The grand drungarios of the fleet pursed his lips in a soundless whistle as he watched Pliskavos burn. "There's a grim sight," he said. As a lifelong sailing man, he feared fire worse than any foe.
Krispos remembered the fright fire had given him the winter before, when wind whipped Midwinter's Day blazes out of control. All the same he said, "It's winning our war for us. Would you sooner have watched our soldiers burn as they tried to storm those walls? Harvas intended the flames for us, you know."
"Oh, aye, he and his deserve them," Kanaris answered at once, "and the ice they'll meet in the world to come, as well. But there are easier ways of dying." He pointed toward the base of the wall.
Some Halogai had chosen to leap to their deaths rather than burn. As is the way of such things, not all had killed themselves cleanly. They burned anyway, most of them, and had the added torment of splintered bones and crushed organs to accompany the anguish of the fire that ate their flesh. The strongest and luckiest tried to crawl away from the flames toward the Videssian line. Forgetting for a moment that they were deadly enemies, imperial troopers darted out to drag two or three of them to safety. Healer-priests hurried up to do what they could for the Halogai.