Soon the ground was slick with blood, the ancient stone flags as treacherous as ice. At least a half dozen more Funderlings died defending the fourth wall, many of them from the ranks of the warders, Vansen’s most experienced fighters. The little men were fighting bravely and the terrain was to their advantage, but the autarch’s officers could bring up wave after wave of soldiers who were not only trained and equipped, but fresh to the fight as well.
As the doomed afternoon and evening wore on, Vansen pondered the increasingly grim arithmetic of their defense. He had known they could never hope to do more than slow the Xixians, but it was plain now that without a miracle they couldn’t hope to hold even an hour longer. At this pace, he and his Funderlings would lie dead to a man long before midnight.
“Fall back!” he shouted. “Back to the last barricade!”
He and several warders stayed to protect the retreat. Funderlings tumbled past him as they scrambled for the rear, their faces pale and haunted. Scaffolders, quarrymen, carvers, not a one of them had been a soldier, but here they were, giving everything they had to defend their tiny piece of country, and everything was indeed being taken from them. It was all Ferras Vansen could do to keep his rage and sorrow from overwhelming him.
As Vansen and a few others fell back to join their comrades, a Xixian arrow caught Sledge Jasper in the back of a leg. He stumbled, falling behind the rest, and in that moment one of the Xixian soldiers saw his chance: the southerner sprang out into the no-man’s-land between the two walls and drove his spear into Sledge Jasper’s back as easily as skewering a fish in a drying pond, then leaped back with a shout of delight as Jasper took a step, crumpled, and fell.
Before he could think about what he was doing Vansen had clambered back over the wall and rushed to his fallen comrade, meeting the surprised Xixian’s defensive thrust with contempt. He yanked the man’s spear out of his hands so hard that the Xixian took a helpless couple of steps toward him, which let Vansen bring his ward-ax around in a great sweep to crush the man’s helmet and the head beneath.
More Xixians were scrambling toward him now, ducking the rocks being thrown by Vansen’s men from behind the last barricade. Vansen scooped up Jasper, whose small, stocky body was heavier than he expected as well as slippery with blood, and ran to the barricade. He delivered the wardthane into waiting hands, then dragged himself over to momentary safety as a flurry of arrows snapped against the stones all around him.
He bent to the wounded man but it was too late: Jasper had stopped breathing. His eyes were open but saw nothing. Vansen felt a cold hatred seize his guts and squeeze them.
“The Elders’ blessings on you, Sledge,” he said quietly.
The Xixians had not attacked again, but he knew they soon would. Vansen turned to the other Funderlings, who watched him with wide-eyed fear or exhausted despair. This last wall had been built smaller and higher than the others in this narrowest part of the cavern, with the hall’s only exit behind it. He made a quick estimate of how many men he still had—perhaps two or three hundred able to fight, no more. Even so, most of them were wounded, and Vansen himself was covered in blood too, much of it his own. He thought of several things to say, discarded them all.
“Sit up straight, men,” he told them finally. “Be pleased, not ashamed. We have nothing else left to do today except make a brave death. We have already made certain that these southerners, twice your size and ten times your numbers, will never be able to speak the name of the Funderlings or of Revelation Hall without sorrow at their losses and surprise at who caused them.”
A small murmur ran through the huddled men, including what might have been a ragged cheer or two.
“Enough of this talking,” Vansen told them. “Cinnabar is still here—he’s just a little under the weather, but he still breathes. And Malachite Copper? He’s here in his best suit—aren’t you, Master Copper?”
The Funderling cleared his throat. “Here indeed, Captain.”
“And Wardthane Jasper will be in the line outside Nozh-la’s Gate with the rest of our friends who’ve gone ahead, watching to see what you do in the next hour. So don’t disappoint them! Up, men, up!”
As they struggled wearily to their feet, Vansen raised his voice to make sure even those in the back could hear him. “Put your shoulders against each other and lift your spears, men. Those who still have shields, keep them up and locked with your fellows’. Don’t give ground except back toward the doorway… and whatever you do, do not break unless you hear me calling the retreat. More than our own lives depend on it.”
“ ’Ware the wall!” someone shouted. The Xixians had brought up a ram and had begun trying to knock down the barricade. Suddenly, the Funderlings were all up and hurrying into place as if the moment of quiet had never happened. Vansen saw a face appear near the top of the wall and took a swing at it with his ward-ax. The Xixian soldier dropped away unscathed and went looking for a spot where the defenders were not so tall. After that, Vansen had little time to do anything except avoid being killed.
Something bad had happened to Ferras Vansen’s left arm; he could no longer lift it above his shoulder. Something else bad had happened to his leg. He could still stand on it, but every time he shifted his weight he felt weakness and pain pierce his knee like a hot needle.
Xixian rams had knocked holes in their last barricade in several places; beyond, Vansen could see manlike shapes and the flicker of torches. Another part of the barricade now shivered as more stones worked loose and tumbled to the floor, one of them crushing an already wounded man’s leg. The fighting had grown too fierce even to pull the injured out of harm’s way. Vansen had never been so exhausted in his life, not even in the lost months behind the Shadowline—it took all his strength simply to remember where he was and what was happening around him. Still, the ladders coming over the top of the barricades at either end were no dream, and the men climbing them were as real as Death itself.
Nearby, several of the Naked warriors leaped down from the top of the barricade, swinging their curved swords and hand-axes. He realized he was staring like a drunkard while men died—his brave, brave men.
“It’s time!” Vansen shouted. “Back through the door! We’ll make our stand on the Balcony. Fall back!”
This time the distance was short. Vansen actually grabbed men and tugged them back from the fighting, but many others had been waiting for this moment and were already hurrying toward the doorway at the back of Revelation Hall in a retreat so ragged that some fell and others stepped on them. More and more Xixians were swarming over the final barricade.
“Hurry!” Vansen picked up someone’s spear from the flagstones and used it to keep the attackers at bay as the last of the Funderlings extricated themselves. He had taken so many wounds today that at any other time he would be with the other injured being cared for, but as the biggest man among his troops he knew that he was always being watched: Vansen remaining upright through all the waves of attack had done much to keep his own men in fighting spirit. But Vansen also knew that the time had come when strategy meant nothing. Each man must now sell his life for as brave a price as he could, but they would never know whether it had been enough.
Vansen and Malachite Copper and a few of Copper’s household troops were the last to retreat through the doorway and out onto the great slab of stone the Funderlings called the Balcony, which stood on the edge of the stony cliff that held the Maze. A hundred feet or more below the Balcony spread the gigantic underground chamber of the Sea in the Depths, although to call that immensity a chamber was like calling Three Brothers Temple a shack, or mighty Hierosol a village. The cavern was almost as wide as the inner keep itself, and its height was unknown. If the great cave had a ceiling, it was lost in darkness above them and could not be seen even from the high balcony of the Maze.