"Oh, he is a kindly man—"
"For the present; but the day may come when he loves his little Jorian less than the cash I could bring. My taste of kingship has taught me never to trust any ruler. They can always justify any perfidy by saying, 'It's for the people's good.'"
The battle continued for hours in ever-deepening darkness and confusion. Then the surviving Penembic ships broke off and fled up the Lyap. The pirates swept the decks of the anchored ships, both naval and merchant, and invested the shoreline outside the wall of the city.
Next day, a Free Company in flashing armor marched down the Novarian Road from the north; Mazsan's peasant army straggled up from the south; and a swarm of robed, camel-riding nomads from Fedirun approached from the east. The siege had begun.
Chapter Seven
THE SIEGE OF IRAZ
THE BESIEGERS SPREAD AROUND IRAZ, OUT OF CATAPULT range, and set up their camps. That of the Free Company was an orderly fortified square of tents, surrounded by a ditch and an embankment. It stood in the fields northeast of the city, where a bend in the Lyap gave the mercenaries room to camp between the river and the wall.
The camp of the Fedirunis was a sprawling city of brown camel's hair tents set every which way, whence sounds of drums and wailing music arose at night. From eastward, a stream of Fedirunis rode camels, horses, mules, and asses down the East Road to join the besiegers. The news that Iraz might be sacked had spread over the eastern deserts and had drawn all the sand thieves of Fedirun like flies to honey. The city of camel's-hair tents grew and spread like a fungus.
Mazsan's peasants had not brought tents. Instead, they built rude huts of fieldstone and brushwood or else slept, bundled in sheepskins, in the open. The Algarthian pirates slept aboard their ships.
The suburb of Zaktan across the Lyap, whose people had all fled to Iraz proper, was plundered and some of the houses were burnt; but a rainy spell prevented a general conflagration. The beacon atop the Tower of Kumashar was dark, for the only incoming ships were additions to the pirate fleet.
The besiegers assembled mantlets, which they extended in lines towards the city. From behind these defenses, their archers sniped at Irazis on the walls. Since this part of Penembei had few trees, the besiegers' engineers broke up some of King Ishbahar's biggest war galleys for timber to build their engines.
Beyond the lines of mantlets, siege engines—catapults, tortoises (wheeled sheds), and belfries (movable siege towers)—began to take shape. The sounds of sawing and hammering continued day and night.
Meanwhile, the wizards on both sides tried out their arts. The besiegers' magicians conjured up illusions of vast, winged monsters, which swooped with bared fangs and fiery breath at the battlements. At first, the defenders scattered with cries of alarm. But Karadur and his assistant wizards quickly identified these monsters as mere harmless phantasms and dispersed them with counter-spells.
The besiegers' sorcerers then cast a mighty spell, which evoked a horde of bat-winged, scaly demons from the Sixth Plane, to assail the defenders with fangs and talons. But the defending thaumaturgists cast a counter-spell. This spell caused all the bees, wasps, and hornets within ten leagues of Iraz to swarm to the city and attack the demons. With shrieks of pain and croaks of outrage, the demons fled and vanished back to their own plane.
The men of the Free Company, as the best-disciplined soldiers among the attackers, were the first to complete a catapult. The skeins, slings, and fittings they had brought along in their baggage wagons, and for timbers they used wood from the dismantled battleships.
This catapult was of the two-armed, dart-throwing type. They levered it forward on its ponderous wheels. A big wooden shield, hung with green hides, was fastened in front of it to protect it against counter-bombardment. Karadur's wizards, collected on the wall, sweated and mumbled and gesticulated in attempts to cast a spell upon the device.
Early one morning, under an overcast sky, Karadur stood watching from the wall. He said to Jorian: "I fear me, alas, that they have already placed a protective spell over yonder engine, so that all my wizards' efforts will go for nought. The advances in magic of recent centuries have given the defense great advantages in wizardly conflict."
Jorian, in silvered scale mail, peered through his spyglass. "Methinks they're ready to shoot," he said. "Take a look."
"Ah, me! You are right."
"Get ready to duck. One of those darts would skewer you like an olive on a toothpick… Here it comes!"
The Free Company's catapult discharged with a crash. The missile— a three-foot bolt of wood and iron, with wooden vanes—whistled over their heads, to curve down and fall inside the city.
"If that be the best they can do," said Karadur, "I doubt that they will soon beat us down by hurling darts at random into this vast city."
"You don't understand," said Jorian. "That was a mere ranging shot. When they get the elevation right, they'll use that engine to scatter defenders on the wall and thus hinder the servicing of our engines. Now, do you see that other catapult a-building, back of the first one?"
"Aye."
"That one will be twice as big and will throw balls of stone or brick instead of darts. They'll wheel it forward and set it to battering a breach in our wall, whilst the dart-thrower protects it 'gainst our counter-measures by a covering bombardment. It may take a fortnight; but soon or late, the wall will crumble and fall at that point."
"What can we do?"
"I've already told Colonel Chuivir to start his masons building a lune behind the threatened point. Whether he'll do it is another thing. He suspects that, when I tell him 'tis the king's will that he do thus-and-so, it is really my idea, and he bubbles with resentment."
"How is our defending army coming?"
Jorian spat. "Lousy! The Royal Guard have had at least formal training, but they're a mere handful. The militia companies are drilling; but the two stasiarchs are more interested in blackguarding and plotting against each other than they are in winning the war. There have been many affrays betwixt Pants and Kilts, with several wounded and a couple slain.
"They're just urban rabble anyway: splendid at rioting, looting, and arson, but as soldiers worth no more than so many rabbits. They argue every command and take a perverse pride in slovenliness and indiscipline. Had I but a few thousand of my sturdy Kortolian peasants…" Jorian laughed shortly. "Perdy, kimmer," he said, falling into his rustic Kortolian dialect, "a grew up in little Ardamai and kenned the farm folk well. Then a thought them the crassest clods, dullards, and skinflints on earth. When a first saw Kortoli City, a said, aha! City life be the life for me! And indeed, a still find city folk better company. But, when it come to the push of the pike, gie me yeomen wi' dung on their boots and na thought but the next harvest in their heads!
"Now, take those houses built against the West Wall, along the waterfront street. That was strictly illegal, since such dwellings provide cover for attackers; but Ishbahar's inspectors doubtless pocketed bribes to overlook…"
Jorian fell silent for a moment while he swept the besiegers' lines with his telescope. Then he said: "Were I boss of yon besiegers, 'stead of wasting time in building catapults and belfries, I'd make hundreds of scaling ladders and send the whole force against our walls at once."
"Why, my son? Such ladders are easily overthrown, to the scathe of the men clinging to them. I have never understood how any number of men could take a defended wall. Why cannot the defenders simply push over the ladders as fast as they are erected?"