‘They’re in there all right,’ someone reported to the squad leader; another of Gorgas’ men, presumably, since Venart had never seen him before, and he looked too fierce to be an Islander. ‘Did you find any oil?’
The squad leader shook his head. ‘Don’t need any,’ he replied. ‘All right, sort out a cordon; I want halberds and poleaxes in the front two ranks, axes and hammers behind. Keep ’em well back; for one thing, this is going to burn hot.’
He was right; oil or pitch or sulphur would have been redundant. As soon as the first few torches pitched in the thatch, the Merchant Venturers’ burst into flames like a beacon, lighting up a circle as bright as noon as far as the buildings on the other side of the square. The Islanders were shocked to see it go up; for a hundred years it had been a source of civic concern to make sure the thatch didn’t catch fire, and setting it alight on purpose would never have occurred to them.
For what seemed like an impossibly long time nothing happened, and Venart found himself wondering if the Imperials were in there, standing to attention as they burned to death at their posts – from what he’d seen of them, he wouldn’t put it past them. Then the front and side doors seemed to explode outwards and the soldiers came pouring into the light, their armour and helmets dazzling; it was like watching molten metal glowing white as it runs from the crucible into the mould, and Venart couldn’t see any way it might be stopped, not by his fellow citizens and a few spikes on long sticks. He didn’t want to watch, he could feel his skin crawling at the thought of cutting edges on bare skin, but it happened too quickly for him to look away in time. At first, the fiery bright ram crashed into the line of points and rode it down; but the mass of bodies behind soaked up the momentum, as the soft padding inside the armour absorbs the blow; the charge slowed and came to a stop, cooling, solidifying into individual men; at which point Venart saw that the outcome was inevitable. Herded together, without room to swing their weapons, the soldiers were crushed down, like an egg in a man’s fist – the brittle shell, the armour, not standing up to the soft pressure all around it, not coming up to this level of proof. They were pulled down, their helmets ripped off; they were bashed down with hammers and axes and spades, mattocks and bidels, until all the shining steel shapes were crumpled into a heap of scrap lying on the ground, under the feet of the people. When it was over, there was a long silence.
So that’s that, Venart thought; and as the crowd surged away from the circle of light and down the hill towards the Drutz, he wondered how this strange creature, this soft and flexible anvil, had been subdued so easily in the first place, when the soldiers first came out on to the streets and the notice of annexation was pinned to the door. It was still there, or at least strips of it were, burning fast and turning into soft ash, but everything else seemed to have changed, and he couldn’t quite work out what had made all the difference. But then he looked sideways at the squad leader, Gorgas’ carefully selected emissary, signalling to his men at the edges of the crowd, effortlessly directing the mob; the Loredan touch, he said to himself; of course, it makes all the difference.
Lieutenant Menas Onasin, in command of the army because everybody else was dead, looked back over his shoulder at the sea. Here we are, then, he thought. We can die on our feet, or we can drown. Spoiled for choice, really.
They were throwing stones; big, jagged stones, chunks of pavement, arms and heads smashed off the statues that lined Drutz Promenade. The man standing next to him in the line had been killed by a marble head, a bizarre way to die, with undesirable overtones of comedy. Having no archers to return fire, he had no option but to stand and take it; he’d tried charging the mob five times, and each time he’d led out a company and brought back a platoon. It was like fighting the sea, or a sandstorm.
His principal mistake had been leaving the cover of the ships in the first place. At the time it had seemed like the sensible thing to do; ships, like thatched buildings, are inflammable, and he hadn’t relished the prospect of fighting on two fronts (the mob on land, the mutinous crews below decks) while trapped between fire above his head and water under his feet. Face them on dry land, he’d told himself, where we can at least stand up straight and use our weapons.
Someone had set up one of the light trebuchets they’d mounted on the forecastles of the ships and was loosing off ranging shots; the first stone fell short, nearly creaming the front row of the mob, the second, third and fourth had gone splash in the water. If the man behind the arm was being at all methodical in his approach, number five was due to pitch into the exact centre of the army, and there was nothing that Lieutenant Onasin could do about it. It was like old times, standing still while quick learners lobbed rocks at his head; he was a Perimadeian, a refugee from the Fall, and he’d learned everything he knew about motionless cowering during Temrai’s bombardment of the City.
For shot number five they used a torso, all that was left of Renvaut Razo’s masterpiece Triumph of the Human Spirit, which had stood in the courtyard of the Copper Exchange ever since Onasin had first visited here as a boy of nine, brought along by his father as a special treat. He could remember the statue vividly; it was huge and dramatic, and the head was far too small for the colossal, mountain-breasted body; but when he’d pointed that out, his father had told him to be quiet, and he’d kept the secret to himself ever since. Now there were bits of the Triumph of the Human Spirit all around him – not just the torso, which had squashed seven armoured men like beetles, but arms and hands and drapery shrapnel too, not to mention the too-small head (which had flattened one man and wrenched the leg off another). He remembered eavesdropping on two earnest-looking women who’d stood for ages just staring at the statue; according to them, what made it so special was the ease and power of its movement. He’d waited twenty years to find out what they’d meant by that. They were right, too; hurled from the sling of a trebuchet, Razo’s gift to the ages moved like shit off a shovel and packed a devastating punch.
They were setting up more trebuchets. It was a pity that the soldiers of the Empire were universally known not to surrender, not under any circumstances, because a few more direct hits were going to panic the men, and that would open gaps in the line; and when that happened, the sea in front of him would come rushing in and sweep him off the dock into the sea behind him, and he was too well armoured to swim. Surrender would be an excellent option right now; but he’d already tried it twice and they simply hadn’t believed him.
Another charge would also break up the line; but on balance Lieutenant Onasin preferred the thought of dying fighting to either drowning or being squashed, so he yelled out the appropriate orders and the front three ranks dressed to the front. A stair, ripped out of the steps that led up to the customs house, enfiladed the front rank, knocking off heads. Onasin raised his arm and stepped forward, straight into the path of a brick. It bounced off his gorget, crimping the metal so that he couldn’t turn his head. Damn, he thought, and dropped his arm to signal the advance.
After that, there wasn’t any point in deluding himself that he had any control whatsoever. The momentum of the ranks behind him boosted him forward like driftwood on a wave, and all he could do was keep his legs moving, so that he wouldn’t get shoved over and trampled. As he was propelled forward, he saw the spike on the head of the halberd dead ahead, but of course he couldn’t slow down, or even move sideways. The man behind him rammed him on to the spike like a cook driving a skewer into a cut of meat; he felt himself being jolted forward as the spike finally burst through the belly of his breastplate, then the shock of coming to a sudden stop as the crossbar at the end of the spike held him back. The pressure on his backplate wasn’t getting any less, which meant that his body was being crushed between the man behind him and the crossbar, the main effect being to drive the spike deeper into his compressed belly.