He ducked into the shadow of the wagon and found two other men already there. They looked at him with wide, fearful eyes. "Move!" he shouted.
Kip climbed up on the wreck and looked out on the plain. At first all he saw were the dead bodies. Several hundred perhaps. Mostly he couldn't see any blood, so it looked like people sprawled about sleeping. It wasn't so great a toll, considering how big the army was, Kip thought, but seeing so many dead wasn't really something he could merely think about. Those people were dead. He could have been one of them. He could still be.
He tore his eyes away, tried to look for something useful. In a few spots at the wall, King Garadul's men had actually reached the top of the wall. There was fighting in three or four places, defenders and attackers alike being thrown off, grappling, puffs of black smoke erupting everywhere from musket and pistol fire.
To Kip's left, there was a slight hill, out of range of musket fire from the wall. There were several hundred horsemen and drafters around the hill. In front of the hill, drafters were crafting a bridge over the irrigation ditch. Kip saw then that the original bridge had been destroyed by the retreating people of Garriston. It had slowed King Garadul's advance, probably more because they'd stopped to talk about it than if they had simply charged the horses through.
At the top of the hill, Kip saw standard bearers and a figure who might have been King Garadul himself. He was shouting, making huge animated movements toward Lord Omnichrome, who was unmistakable because he literally glowed in the early morning light.
Kip didn't realize he'd made a decision until he found himself running. He snatched a musket from the ground next to a woman curled in the fetal position, moaning, and kept running. His vengeance was this close.
As Kip approached the hill, movement began on the hill and rapidly spread, horns sounding orders. It was a few seconds before Kip saw the horses moving. King Garadul was advancing on the wall-personally, right toward the Mother's Gate. Was he trusting that his men would open the gate by the time he got there, or was he just an idiot?
Kip was halfway up the hill when he saw a woman whose form seemed familiar. He stopped.
Karris White Oak had flagged down one of the horsemen heading after King Garadul. The man slowed down for her, and she swung up into the saddle behind him with surprising grace. The man turned in the saddle to ask her a question, and then tumbled out. Kip saw the quick gleam of a dagger, then it was sheathed, and Karris kicked the horse's sides and went speeding after King Garadul. She was going by herself, and with her eye caps still on. She wouldn't be able to draft, but she was still going to try to kill him. Even if she were successful, it would be suicide.
I swore to save her. And I swore to kill him.
Kip was a terrible rider, but there was no way he could catch up without a horse. Seeing horses tied up near the crown of the hill, he headed straight for them.
"… through the Lover's Gate. You'll have to swim. Join the refugees. He'll-"
Kip rounded a tent in time to see the young drafter Zymun swing up into a saddle. He was taking orders from Lord Omnichrome himself. Kip's heart leaped. They weren't twenty paces away.
"You need a horse?" someone said, right at Kip's elbow.
Kip almost jumped out of his skin. He blinked stupidly at the groom.
"Rough work out there, huh?" the groom said.
"Message!" Kip said, remembering he was carrying a messenger bag. "Message for the king! Yes, a horse! I need a horse."
"I figured," the man said. He went off to find a beast large enough.
Kip looked back toward Lord Omnichrome and Zymun. He missed whatever else they said, but he saw Lord Omnichrome hand a box to the mounted drafter.
That box. Kip couldn't believe it.
That was his box. Right size. Right shape. That was his inheritance. The only thing his mother had ever given him. And Zymun had it.
Zymun bowed to Lord Omnichrome. Kip sank back as the young drafter pulled his horse around and galloped away to the east. Lord Omnichrome strode back toward the crown of the hill. The groom brought Kip a horse and helped him mount and stash the musket in a sleeve beside the saddle.
Kip looked, torn. Lord Omnichrome was disappearing up the hill, rejoining his entourage. He was the heart of this; Kip knew it. He should kill him. Orholam, his chance was passing through his fingertips. But to the south, Karris was charging to her death, and to the east, that snake Zymun was stealing the only thing Kip had to remember his mother by. Kill Lord Omnichrome and stop the war. Kill Zymun and take the knife. Or save Karris and have a chance at King Garadul. Kip couldn't get them all.
Kip had made his oaths to the living and to the dead. He gritted his teeth, sure he was making the wrong decision-and making it anyway. It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die. Gavin loved Karris, and he deserved another chance at happiness. Kip rode after her.
Chapter 83
Karris had never fought in a full-scale battle before, but she had watched several with Gavin's general Running Wolf. In another age, he would have been revered as a great leader. Instead, he'd faced Corvan Danavis, and been thrice bested by smaller forces commanded by the mustachioed genius. Regardless, he'd been a kindly older gentleman with a soft spot for Karris, and he would explain to her what he was seeing as the distant lines clashed. Of course, he was often too busy to tell her much, but at other times it seemed to help him to think out loud. So now as Karris galloped down the hill and headed toward the fray, she was able to piece together more than she would have otherwise.
The buildings propped against both sides of the wall-the feature that would eventually doom it, Karris was sure-were actually helping in the short term. They were like a talus slope, wide enough that it encumbered anyone bringing forward siege ladders, and too unpredictable to charge men straight up at any one place. Eventually, King Garadul's men would figure out which places were stable and how much weight they could support, but until then the collapsing buildings killed and slowed the men attacking the wall.
As Karris rode in, drafters appeared at the top of the wall en masse for the first time. The wall wasn't high, but it was wide enough for the defenders to move along the top at great speed, and they'd seen King Garadul's cavalry coming here.
Reds and sub-reds worked in teams from the top of the walls, one flinging sticky pyre jelly down onto the attackers, and the other setting it alight. King Garadul had a line of his own drafters up front, blues and greens attempting to divert the pyre jelly in midair and throw it back at the wall. Reds threw their own luxin up at the defenders on the wall, though Garadul's teams weren't as good at getting it alight every time. On both sides, musketeers did their best to pick off drafters.
The defenders were getting the best of it, but there were simply so many attackers, Karris didn't see how they could possibly hold out for long. And why had King Garadul brought his cavalry here now? Directly against the wall, their maneuverability was negated and they made easy targets for the blue drafters at the top of the wall, who would pop up from behind the crenellations, fire off a few daggers of blue, and then duck back down.
All Karris had to do was muscle her way through the crowd-not hard when you were mounted-steal a musket, stay alive long enough to get close to King Garadul, and blow his head off. In the heat and fury and blood and confusion and cacophony of battle, it was quite possible no one would even realize the killing shot had come from behind him.
Karris heard a yell behind her, somehow different from the rest of the screams. She turned her head, still leaning low over her galloping horse. A dozen Mirrormen, coming after her on their gigantic chargers. Her heart convulsed.
So the subtle approach isn't going to work.