What had he been thinking? Why hadn’t he sent runners to do the job for him, and run straight back?
Had he made the biggest mistake of his recent, disastrous life?
CHAPTER 43
Rix pounded around the battlements, praying that he would reach Basalt Crag in time. And that when he arrived, he still had strength to fight.
The hail had stopped and the rain had eased a little, but the lightning was as ferocious as ever. And he made a fine target, being the tallest man on the wall. The great dome had been struck repeatedly, and several of the smaller domes as well, while a strike on one of the lower roofs had blasted roof slates everywhere and set alight the framing timbers beneath, though the deluge had put the fire out in seconds.
The wind was gusting wildly, shifting from one quarter to another as the storm passed overhead. Now it was blasting hard rain into his face, stinging his battered cheek and getting into his eyes, half blinding him. A savage gust that almost lifted him off his feet drove him sideways into a battlement. Had he been passing a low point in the wall it might have carried him over the edge.
Where was everyone? There had been no guards at the last tower, and there were none on this section of wall either. He stopped, momentarily confused. No lightning had flashed for a minute now and the dark was impenetrable.
Rix forced the plan of the defences into his mind. Ah, yes! He was halfway along the escarpment side, where the wall rose up from solid rock to twice the height of the entrance wall, at least sixty feet. Not even the Cythonians would try to attack here, for there was no solid ground on which to place their ladders.
Focus! He was only a couple of hundred yards from Basalt Crag. Lightning flashed, illuminating the way ahead, and he put his head down and ran. If he got there in time, and by some miracle they beat off this attack, it would not only gain Garramide some breathing space, but it would improve morale in the fortress immeasurably.
Rix was only a hundred yards away when, in a momentary lull in the storm, he heard a curious clacking sound from below. He froze, ducked behind the battlement, and carefully peered over the wall.
A distant flash of lightning froze an instant of the scene below. Not enough to resolve the individual dark-clad figures huddled against the base of the wall, but enough to produce paired reflections from at least a dozen eyes, looking straight up.
Had they seen him? Since he had been looking down, there could be no reflection from his eyes, though they might have noticed the outline of his head against the lightning-lit sky. If they had, their archers would be waiting, and the next time he looked over they would put their arrows through his face.
Did they have scaling ladders, or were they attacking the wall itself? It was very thick here and quite a few bombasts would be needed to breach it. But for all he knew, they might have a dozen.
What to do? The bigger danger, he felt sure, was at Basalt Crag… though the men he’d sent would be there by now, and one more, even himself, would make little difference.
However if they climbed onto the wall here, or breached it and got into the fortress without anyone knowing, they could take the women and children hostage and force a surrender.
He dared not look down from here. Rix scurried along the wall for thirty feet, to a point where he would be in shadow when the lightning flashed, and gingerly peered over. Half a dozen troops were raising a scaling ladder. Further along, another group was working at the base of the wall. A faint light flickered there, though not enough to reveal what they were up to. It wasn’t an orange light though, as though they had been igniting a fuse. It was a pale, steady blue, like the light of a partly shuttered glowstone lantern.
Could they be assembling some mechanical contrivance? There was no way to tell. He crept back until he was directly above them, then rose to his full height and took hold of the heavy capstone on top of the riser of the battlement.
Loose capstones were a defensive innovation Swelt had mentioned in one of his inventories. At least, it had been an innovation a thousand years ago, though since Garramide had never been besieged it could not have been used. Would it still work?
The capstones were not mortared on, but mounted on brass pins set in the stone beneath. The capstones could not slide or fall, but two strong men could lift one off its pins and drop it on any attackers below. Could one very strong but weary man do it by himself? Or had time and the elements cemented the capstone immoveably onto the wall?
He rose beneath it, took hold of the overhang of the capstone on the left with his good hand, and the overhang on his right with the steel gauntlet, then strained until his back clicked. The capstone did not budge. He tried again, with the same result.
It could not be done. No man save the late, unlamented Arkyz Leatherhead could have lifted one of these. Nonetheless, Rix took another grip, crouched, raised his arms until they were straight, locked them and slowly, slowly began to straighten his legs.
The strain was immense. He could feel his back spasming, and began to fear that he would dislocate his shoulder, or that the steel gauntlet would shatter his right wrist bones. He strained harder, taking it slowly, and the capstone inched up on the right-hand side, then the left. Higher, higher. Not far to go now. Then it stopped and he could raise it no further.
He was about to let it down when a familiar voice spoke, in a hoarse whisper. “You bloody fool, Rix. Why can you never ask for help? I’ve got it. Heave, now!”
Rix heaved, the other man did too, and with a faint rasp of stone on stone the capstone went over the edge and fell away.
A muffled thud, a scream of agony, then a bombast went off with unimaginable ferocity, shaking the wall and grinding the other capstones back and forth on their pins.
Rix looked over the side, carefully. The wall was not badly damaged, for the bombast had not been fixed in place and most of the blast had gone outwards. But of the enemy soldiers who had been huddled there, there was no trace.
The other dozen, who had been halfway up the scaling ladder, were scattered across the rocky ground and the ladder was broken.
Rix rubbed his ringing ears and turned around, half expecting that the voice had been a hallucination brought on by the strain. If so, it was a fleshly one. His eyes stung with tears as successive flashes lit the dirty, bewhiskered, grinning face of the friend he had given up for dead weeks ago.
“Tobry? What the hell are you doing here?”
“I might ask the same of you, Deadhand.”
“I thought you were done for.”
“I should be, but this isn’t the time for a beer and a yarn about it.”
They embraced, and he clung to his friend for a long moment, before pulling away.
“They’re attacking further along with scaling ladders. Have you been there?”
“Nope,” said Tobry. “Heard the fighting and climbed the wall up from the escarpment. Seemed the safest way in, all things considered.”
Rix froze. He’d ruled out an attack on the escarpment side because it was almost sheer. “Do you reckon the enemy could do the same?”
“One or two might get up, if they can climb wet rock as well as I can. Which seems doubtful, since they’ve lived all their lives in dry, horizontal tunnels.”
Rix relaxed. “I’ve never met anyone who can climb as well as you. The night old Luzia was murdered, you carried me up the outside wall of my tower, single-handed.”
“What a lousy night that was.”
The storm was passing, but the icy southerly wind behind it was picking up, the rain turning to driven snow.
“It’s damn cold up here,” said Tobry.
“They say there’s a blizzard coming. A bad one.”