Sovereign

Lynan ordered the assault on the west wall to begin the following day.

CHAPTER 13

Charion woke, startled, staring into the dark. For a moment all she could think of were the shreds of a dream; fragments of a  green forest, alluring and somehow threatening at the same time.

Then the sound of a trumpet, and she recognised the sound that had woken her. It had come from the west. She leaped out of her bed and rushed to the window. She could hear sounds of running soldiers, cries, the sound of fear, the low ringing of despair.

Someone banged on her door. Farben's voice. 'Your Majesty! They attack the west wall! They attack the west wall!'

She hurried to the door and flung it open. Her secretary was holding a torch, its flame exaggerating his frightened features. 'Get in!' she ordered, and used the light to slip on her hauberk and sword belt, then together they rushed out of the palace, Charion's helmet under her arm, Farben pattering behind.

Around her sergeants and captains were shouting orders, making sure soldiers kept to their posts and did not automatically rush to the point of attack only to leave other sections of the wall vulnerable. Other inhabitants hovered near the doorways of their homes, hugging their children to them. Workers were busy lighting lamps spaced along the streets.

Galen joined her. 'The knights are ready,' he told her. She nodded. As they drew closer to the west wall she could hear the cries of the enemy, the wild whoops of the Chetts. She repressed the shiver starting up her spine. She had faced them once before and beaten them off. This time, in her own city, she would do it again.

The three of them reached stairs and ran up, went through a guard tower and then they were there. She pulled a soldier away from the wall and looked over. She could see a scuttling tide of warriors gathering around the foot of the wall. Ladders were being raised. Ropes with hooks twirled in the air. Arrows flashed in the night, most clattering uselessly against the stonework, some found a mark.

'How many?' Galen asked.

Charion shrugged. 'Too dark to be sure. Several hundred. A thousand.'

'A diversion?'

Again she shrugged. How did he expect her to know so soon? Then she remembered he had never been through a siege, and although she had only gone through one, compared to Galen she was a veteran. The thought made her smile grimly. 'Too early to tell.'

An arrow whistled passed her ear.

'Put out that fucking torch!' a voice roared.

Farben whimpered and dropped the torch to the ground below, narrowly missing a worker stoking a fire under a cauldron of oil. More curses, and more whimpering from Farben.

'What are you doing here?' Charion asked the secretary.

'Waiting for orders,' he said.

She looked at him then, a man as small as she and not suited for anything really except life at court; and yet he had never deserted her, always been at her side if he could, in spite of any danger.

'Go back to the palace,' she said gently. 'I will ask for you if I need you.'

Farben hesitated, did a little nervous dance with his feet.

'Go,' she repeated.

He nodded, smiled thankfully and left.

The top of a roughly made wooden ladder appeared over the wall. A soldier with a long forked stick started pushing it away when Charion stopped him. She tested the ladder. 'Wait until there is more weight against it.' They waited a few seconds and Charion tested it again. 'Now!' she ordered, and the soldier pushed with all his strength. Galen got behind and helped. The ladder seemed to balance in midair for a moment, then finally eased back away from the wall. They heard no screams, but two very satisfying thumps. The soldier grinned at Charion, turned to thank Galen for his help. Something hit him in the head, flinging him off the walkway to land in a broken heap on the ground below.

Galen swore. 'What was that?'

Something smacked hard into the tower behind them and dropped to the walkway. 'They're throwing bloody rocks at us!' Galen said and scrunched down to present a smaller target.

Charion went over to the object and picked it up. 'No,' she said, surprised by its weight. 'It's metal, not stone.'

'Metal? That means…'

'Ballistae!' Charion finished for him. She looked at Galen in alarm. 'The Chetts don't have sappers!'

More guards were hit and everyone on the walkway hunkered down behind the parapets. A cluster of new ladders and rope hooks appeared; no one seemed to be in a hurry to expose themselves to the ballistae to push them away.

'Come on!' Charion shouted to Galen, and together they stood up, grabbed one of the forked sticks and forced a ladder far enough off balance for it to topple sideways. This time there were some screams. Everyone else on the walkway, shamed into action, stood then and pushed at the ladders and severed the climbing ropes. A few of the defenders were hit by metal missiles, but no enemy made it to the top. When the last ladder was gone everyone ducked back down again.

'Who taught the Chetts to build artillery?' Galen asked, not expecting an answer.

Charion slapped the wall. 'That's why Lynan didn't attack us right after the battle!'

Galen looked at her curiously. 'What are you talking about?'

'He attacked Salokan! Don't you see? He had to rebuild his army's confidence, and Salokan's army was already defeated and in retreat. The Haxans had sappers. Lots of them.'

'It wouldn't take him all this time to destroy an army and recruit its sappers,' Galen said.

'No, but it might take him that long to conquer Haxus.'

'God,' Galen said as the implications of what Charion was suggesting sank in. 'We're in trouble.'

Charion nodded. All the hurried repair work they had done to Daavis had been in expectation of an assault by a Chett army unversed in the art of siege warfare and, even more importantly, without the expertise necessary to build artillery and siege engines. She had never expected Lynan's army to attempt anything more complex than scale the city walls or try and undermine them.

'We're going to lose Daavis,' Galen said sombrely.

'I'm not going to lose my city!' Charion said fiercely. 'I beat off Salokan, I can beat off Lynan!'

Galen said nothing, but knew that Charion beat off Salokan because Sendarus and the force he commanded—which then had included Galen and the knights from the Twenty Houses—had arrived in time to break the siege. This time there would be no one marching to the rescue. It would take months for Grenda Lear to replace the army it lost when Lynan attacked Sendarus and effectively eliminated it as a fighting force.

'They're retreating!' someone called.

Charion and Galen risked glimpsing over the parapets. The Chetts were running back to their lines, taking their wounded with them.

'Do you have a sally port?' Galen asked suddenly.

'Yes. We call it the main gate.'

'Oh.'

'I'm not going to risk you and your knights yet, Galen,' Charion told him.

'We're not much use where we are.'

'I'll need you if the Chetts break through. A determined charge by your force should secure any breach long enough for us to reinforce from one of the other walls.'

'Well, they're gone for the moment.'

'They'll be back.'

'How long?'

'Before evening,' Charion said. 'And they'll try here again, I'll warrant.'

'How do you know that?'

'Because Lynan is trying to convince us this is where he'll be getting in.'

As Eynon's warriors reached the safety of their lines the first rays of a new day lit the eastern horizon. He had sent three hundred out, and most of them returned in good order and on their feet. When the count came back he had lost thirty dead and that many again wounded. The reports of the survivors told him what he needed to know about the defences, and he immediately started planning the next assault. Lynan, who had watched the attack with him, promised him more artillery.