The stable hands had run back towards the inn to spread word of trouble. Now, a few guards approached along the city’s high, curved shelf with weapons drawn.
Sharfy looked from Siel to Anfen to the approaching guards, and he drew the sword he’d bought yesterday from smiths in the Bazaar. It now flashed sideways, knocking Siel’s bow off target. The arrow loosed and skidded across the ground. He wrenched the bow from her hands and hurled it into a pile of hay. Soon he too found a quality mount already saddled and climbed up. ‘Be safe,’ Anfen told Siel, who stood helplessly watching them with tears streaking down her face.
His horse galloped out onto the shelf, rearing as it passed the guards, Sharfy following. They headed against the flow of people for the long ramps down, and found one whose barricade was not yet in place. They began steering through a panicking mass of citizens fleeing for the southern gate. From Elvury, the Wall at World’s End would be a week’s hurried ride through far safer country than the Aligned north, if they rode like the wind straight down the great dividing road and changed horses at every chance. Which was what Anfen intended.
He hoped that as he rode a way to destroy the Wall would occur to him, for he still had no idea how it could be done.
When Loup heard what had happened, he found a steed of his own and headed after them.
59
‘A city,’ said the war mage, bowing again as though it were his butler, and pointing a hooked claw at something off in the distance. Though Eric could not see Elvury, he could see smoke pouring into a faintly brightening white sky, empty of magic. He assumed the lack of magic was why the war mage had set him down here, on the ledge of a small cave above the mouth of a mountain pass.
The war mage waited for instructions, cat-yellow eyes studying him carefully. He had no thought for it at all, for below in broad columns soldiers poured from the fields and into the narrow pass with shields held over their heads, boots stomping the ground like a drumbeat. Only after the last row of men had made their way into the tunnel did anything happen: an explosive noise sounded at the entrance, echoing off the sheer cliff faces. A huge column of stone fell out of a groove in the cliff’s wall and slammed across the road, making a quick escape back through the pass impossible.
At intervals along the road, smaller columns were by invisible means blown free from the walls with sounds like huge whips cracking to thud down across the path. The invaders scrambled in panic to avoid being crushed, which most of them managed to do. The fallen pillars made their passage slow — made a charge at the city’s gate at the other end of the mile-long pass nearly impossible. Once retreat was cut off, a hail of arrows and stones began to rain down. The shields held overhead made it look as if insects with shells crawled sluggishly along, and sent arrows glancing to the ground with the odd flash of sparks lighting up the pass.
Weighted rope ladders flew up over the roadblocks near the gates, and men scrambled over. Far fewer missiles rained down on them than should have, for many of the pass’s defenders had fled their perches and run back to see why horns blared in the city. Two-thirds of the invading force survived their passage through that hellish stretch, to regroup in the space beside the huge gate, safe from attack. None of the rank and file yet knew what awaited them behind the city walls, only that something unnamed would leave Elvury’s defences weak by the time they got inside, that their mission was to finish the city off then enjoy a day’s plunder before the castle overseers arrived to catalogue the takings.
Back along the ‘road of death’, as it would be known in tavern lore, thousands of bodies in colours of many Aligned cities were piled in a short space, with no one to collect the wounded or to finish off those dying slowly. At the tunnel’s entrance, waiting with the elite unit sent to stamp out any potential rebellion, the General ordered the deaths of those few who’d refused to enter the pass. Some had got away and fled towards the elemental plains, where punishment enough probably awaited them from the wild things there. There had not been many deserters, little more than a hundred in all. The General marvelled at the waste of troops so brave. Vous’s feet had trampled this road, and Valour, if he had watched the fight at all, gave no battlefield reprieve.
60
High up as he was, Eric was mercifully too far to see many details in the gruesome picture below. The distant sounds of it, the screams and thuds of heavy rocks toppling, were bad enough. Then had come the huge logs, soaked in flammable oil and tossed down amongst the scrambling bodies, to be lit by fire-tipped arrows.
The war mage hadn’t shown much interest in proceedings down there; once or twice it had made rasping speech Eric took to mean it wished for them to leave. ‘The city is just over there, isn’t it? Is it safe there?’
‘Not safe,’ it answered, surprisingly lucid.
‘Are you sure? That army lost a lot of men.’
It clawed the air with its fingers, irritated. ‘A ship sails on … churning waves. A wave crashes into … churning rocks. Rocks fall on … churning ground …’
Eric nearly succumbed to the urge to kick it. ‘Fuck! I wish you could speak clearer. What do you intend for me, then? To take me to Anfen?’
It looked confused. ‘A servant.’
‘A servant, great. Know what? I wish you’d change clothes. Is the human skin really needed? It’s supposed to look like human skin, to make you feared, right? In fact, is that human skin?’
A high-pitched garble sounded in its throat.
‘Great. You’re wearing human skin. Just great. So is Anfen at the city or not? Let’s find him. Take me inside.’
The war mage spat and made a rasping sound of disapproval, but grasped him again and leaped off the ledge. For two seconds they plunged straight down until it veered away from the deathly scene in the pass, making a curved line through the sheer walls for the northern gate. From this short flight, with no visible magic in the air its body was soon almost too heated to bear, its breathing a deathly rattle. Flight in skies thick with magic had heated it up much more slowly.
The huge gate approached. Beyond it plumes of smoke poured into Elvury’s skies and horns blew like pained cries. The first invaders to make it through the pass gathered off to the left in an area free from raining arrows and rocks, and waited for others to catch up.
The war mage perched up on a high turret on the gate itself, smoke and stink puffing from its overheated body. The city unveiling beyond was bigger than Eric had anticipated. The far southern gate was too distant to see, even from this high up. Thousands of rooftops and steep roads extended out across ground that dramatically sloped away from the mountains on the right and left of the gate. They’d landed on the highest part of the city’s wall, atop of which was a thick platform with room for defenders to take places for shooting below. In both directions were bows, shields, quivers and slings lying discarded. It took a moment for him to realise that what defenders remained did not face the pass, where the invaders still streamed through. They faced back into the city, and from the walls occasional arrows rained down inside it.
Directly below on the city’s side was what might have looked like a child’s messy room, with toy soldiers scattered around in broken parts, were it not for the litter of organs and blood spread thick on the pavement. Screams and distant sounds like explosions could be heard, and fires raged. There were few survivors moving about.
Still as statues down there — still for the most part — were Tormentors, and suddenly Eric understood: dead city; the reason the pit devils had been driven north; and the timing of the troop build-up. There, the reasons stood motionless or stalked around in that jagged, lurching stride, like badly controlled puppets. A mass of spent arrows littered the ground, many of which had hit their targets and bounced away, only the most powerful bows and crossbow bolts piercing the monsters’ hides. No foot soldiers remained standing to fight back. In the far distance was the unmistakeable shape of a Tormentor, only it was massive, striding between buildings, then lost from view. ‘Holy shit,’ Eric said.