The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  ‘They will come now,’ he said, relieved to hear his own voice. ‘Be ready, Master Deeds. Perhaps tonight you will wipe the past clean.’

  ‘It’s already clean,’ Deeds said in wide-eyed innocence. ‘Though I will add the murder of a tavern-keeper if Basker touches me again.’

  The right wall was silent, while only a few guns still fired on the left. Compared with the mass volleys of moments before, it was pitiful and all too clearly desperate. It meant Hondo’s eyes had a chance to adjust to the night again, however. He squinted back and forth, turning his head. Another ship was sliding down the river. He wondered if the walls would take a third explosion. Perhaps that was the plan – to just batter them down, to rain stones on the defenders and then walk in over rubble.

  ‘Another one coming. Any ideas?’ Hondo called to the others.

  He felt helpless. Outside the walls, the banks shifted. Hondo grew still as he tried to be certain, though some part of him had been looking for them, dreading the sight. He did not fear soldiers gathered there for the assault. Soldiers were men. Yet he’d seen that particular patch of darkness in the Féal camp. It shifted like foam on a seashore under moonlight, like spilled oil. As someone organised the defenders, as gunfire began to light the night once more, Hondo counted them in flashes, in groups of three or four. The armoured black warriors Nancy had driven a sword through were there. He counted at least a dozen of them, waiting, milling like ants.

  ‘The dark ones from the camp,’ Hondo said. ‘We can’t let them into the city.’

  The thought of such pitiless creatures let loose in the tenements and alleys they had run through was terrifying.

  ‘We don’t have Nancy, though,’ Deeds pointed out. ‘And without her, we can’t stop them.’

  They turned to watch the other fireship coming closer. For all they knew, there were a dozen behind her.

  ‘Maybe we can stop that,’ Hondo said.

  He turned to Bosin, but the big man suddenly spun on his heel and vanished into the darkness. The other four watched him disappear back the way he had come with varying degrees of incredulity.

  Deeds waited for someone else to speak and took a step away from Basker.

  ‘Well, I didn’t …’

  ‘Deeds?’ Hondo interrupted. ‘I swear I will kill you myself. Be silent.’

  He looked out at the ship on the river, already with a gleam of red showing in its heart. The forces on the right side of the river gate were still silent and dark.

  ‘Come, gentlemen,’ Hondo said. He drew his sword and they were all struck by the ringing note, almost like a bell. ‘We can stop that ship.’

  23

  Armour

  Tellius bit his lip, wincing as he saw enormous wheeled constructions slowly brought to the fore. Oxen lowed in distress as they were driven on, whipped and struck in their exhaustion. Tellius swore under his breath, angry with himself. He had sent three men in to report on the massive things being hauled behind the army of Féal. Two had gone out filthy, reeking of sweat and horses. The third had relied on a simple cooking pot, saying men rarely challenged servants struggling with a heavy burden. All three had worked for Tellius for years and he’d trusted their skills. While the army marched on Darien, his people had lit out in the dark, circling right around and joining the teams there, trying to get a glimpse of whatever threats lay waiting on the huge carts. Wrapped in tarred or oiled canvas, they had been better guarded than the king himself – and that had made Tellius fear them. Not one of his people had returned. The three men had vanished in the night, as if the army had simply swallowed them.

  Whatever the things were, they seemed to need dozens of oxen to pull them into position. Tellius leaned forward, resting his hands on the wall as the thick canvas coverings were peeled away, all down the Féal line. He frowned at the sight of massive black tubes, surrounded by men standing to attention as the animals were unharnessed and driven to the rear to eat or be eaten. He saw braziers being lit and curved wooden shields assembled. A few of his officers tested the range for pistol fire, but out on the plain, the teams didn’t even flinch from the shots. The black tubes looked a lot like barrels themselves – and Tellius felt his heart sink as if he had dropped down a well.

  Cities had time and leisure and the markets to make weapons – Darien was the proof of that with its pistols and crossbows, even the artefacts of the Twelve Families like the De Guise sword. Perhaps nations like the kingdom of Féal had similar resources to bring to the field of war.

  The enemy seemed to need light more than privacy to set up their positions. They sparked huge torches and lamps to life and Tellius watched as they scurried around in preparations. He hated the feeling of standing still while others made all the running. It was the reality of remaining behind a defensive wall, of course. Yet before the sun had set, he’d seen an army that stretched to the horizon. Eighty thousand? More? There was no question of sallying out against so many. All his plans were to hold and bleed them against the walls, with contingencies for what would need to be done if they broke through.

  The boy-king of Darien was further off along the wall, speaking to the men and awing them that he remained in their midst at such a time. Tellius hoped Arthur would not be killed. There was no heir ready to take over if he fell. They hadn’t thought they would ever need one.

  Tellius turned as Nancy reached the crest. She saluted him and smiled, though it looked adorable rather than particularly military, like a woman wearing a man’s shirt. Tellius nodded to her, putting thoughts like that out of his mind.

  ‘You called, Tellius?’ she said. Her expression darkened as she saw the line of torches and the army of Féal revealed. ‘There are a lot of them.’

  ‘We’ve taken a piece out of their cavalry,’ he said.

  Tellius didn’t mention the woman he had seen with her child, or the other families that hadn’t made it to safety. Nancy knew the realities as well as he did.

  ‘Here,’ he said, holding out the slim box. She had returned it to him when they’d come back to the city, but it was made for her, in defence of Darien. ‘Keep it on you. There’ll be no holding back against these. You’ll need it if they reach the top of the walls.’

  She took the box with the Sallet Stone reverently, as if he passed her a relic of the Goddess. Tellius watched as Nancy made it vanish into a pocket of her dress. She nodded once, accepting the seriousness of his words and the charge he laid upon her.

  ‘I’m not so good over long range,’ she said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Long range doesn’t worry me. They can stay at long range until they starve, as far as I’m concerned. It’s short range I’m concerned about. It’s those things swarming over there.’

  He pointed to the black-armoured creatures she had seen in the camp. Nancy recalled a nightmare while she’d slept, there and gone in memory, though it made her shudder. There still seemed to be hundreds of them and they were never still, as if they had to move or fall. They were not men, she recalled, though they’d seemed aware. She felt her fingers clench.

  ‘They burn well enough,’ she said. ‘But I see no towers. How can they reach us?’

  ‘Pray they can’t,’ Tellius said.

  Along the vast front of the Féal line, huge banners rose, signalling something. Tellius opened his mouth to speak again and then jumped as a rippling line of shot sounded in a roll, from one end of the line to the other. The cannon teams worked in unison, almost as a display, so that each weapon fired a moment after the one alongside.

  The results shook the wall. Tellius could feel a shuddering beneath his feet, that built and built. Smoke hid the Féal army completely and Tellius heard them cheering. He hated them then.

  ‘What are those things?’ Nancy whispered.

  ‘Just guns,’ he said and shook his head. ‘The Aeris legion has some small ones. We’ve been working on casting iron barrels of that size, but I turned the master smiths onto making chains for the river gate instead. It seems
the army of Féal has solved the problems of scaling them up.’

  As the smoke cleared, Tellius saw one of the big guns had burst, killing those around it. Yet the rest were being reloaded. He watched in sick fascination.

  ‘Will the walls hold?’ Nancy asked. ‘Against those things?’

  Tellius looked at her.

  ‘That was a show of power, to frighten. They will turn them now on the gates. After that … no. I don’t think the walls will hold.’ She thought how exhausted he looked as he went on. ‘You should go back to the streets below, Nancy. You’re too valuable to lose if all this comes down.’

  The south side of the river gate was a grim place. The previous fireship had come right up against it, actually touching the stone piers before exploding. Hondo found the first bodies at the base, where men had been standing in groups, perhaps to reinforce those on the crest, or change the watch. They lay still, as if asleep, yet they were cold and dead. Some had been sent tumbling and lay sprawled, while others had been caught by some piece of wood or chip of stone as deadly as any bullet. They lay in lines and curves, like script, putting Hondo in mind of the aftermath of a great battle, where the officers walk amongst the dead, looking to learn from the action for next time. Further back, he could hear voices weakly calling for help, but he ignored them. He had different duties, different skills.

  The street entrance to the wall itself had been barred with iron gates. They hung twisted and awry and Hondo wrenched them open to step through. He thought the stone walls would surely have protected those within, but the opposite seemed to be true. As he climbed the steps to the crest, he saw blood splashed across the walls and more bodies, though whether they had been flung or crushed or flattened, he had no idea. They did not look like men so much as piles of cloth and metal. Hundreds lay dead where they had clustered on one side to shoot down at the invaders.

  Every one of them had been a young man desperate to defend his people and his city. They would have known what the ship represented, from experience of the first one. Yet they had leaned over even so, cramming themselves in to pour fire against that enemy.

  Hondo bowed his head, giving them honour. They had not run, because they stood on the walls of their home. Because their women and children waited within. It was not a small thing – and he was pleased Taeshin bowed his head as well as he reached the crest. Even Deeds was silent, though it might have been the bulk of Basker at his back that kept his tongue still in his head. Where was Bosin? Hondo cursed his friend, feeling a spike of worry that the big man’s mind had broken, after so many shocks.

  The only way past the river gate was one not available to those outside. No one could get through the water entrance without swimming – and that was impossible for men in armour. Had any of the enemy been so foolish as to strip off to get in, they would have been easy meat for soldiers on the city side of the river.

  That left the wall itself. In the darkness, some enterprising officer had rigged a rope walkway on the inner edge, no doubt to stop his men falling to their deaths. It was held by iron rods driven into sand and stone. The rods had survived the blast, though they leaned outward and the whole scene was blackened and charred. Hondo sent Deeds after the other end of the rope. When he hauled it free, the sword saint pulled it towards him in great loops. Hondo went to Basker then and spoke quietly.

  ‘I’ll need someone up here to pull the rope back up. I can hardly leave it for the men of Féal to climb.’

  Basker tried to hide his relief that he would not be asked to shimmy down a high wall. He was strong enough when standing still, but against his own weight, he did not think that would be enough. He nodded and Hondo clapped him on the shoulder once again.

  Hondo, Taeshin and Deeds tied the rope on. Deeds checked it carefully, showing he did not trust the other two to have made a decent job, though their lives would rely on it as well.

  There was no time for speeches and the three of them just vanished over the side. Basker waited until the rope went slack and then pulled it up, hand over hand. After that, he was alone for the first time since leaving his tavern. He leaned against the wall and panted, trying to keep his heart in his chest. When that had ceased to be a concern, he went and took a pistol and bullets from the hand of a dead man. After a while staring out at the next fireship slipping along the current towards him, he fetched two more and stuck them into his belt.

  Hondo had seen the night before how poorly an army fares against a small group of hostiles. The entire structure of regiments and officers and massed lines of infantry or horsemen was a bureaucracy not dissimilar to a city. As soon as numbers were too great for men to know one another by sight, they needed signifiers of armour or shields or flags – and boundaries. Those outside were the enemy, while those who walked purposefully through the ranks would surely already have been challenged if they were not one of us. It meant he only had to get past the outer ring of guards and sentries to be able to move swiftly.

  There was no mercy in him. He and Taeshin worked together in pair patterns, changing position back and forth as they approached a guard, appearing out of the darkness and leaving him dead. One of them distracted while the other killed – and Deeds had to scramble to keep up, so quickly did they move. It was not even as well ordered as the formal Féal camp had been. These were regiments of men waiting on a dark field to assault a city, or for fireships to blow enough of it to pieces that they could walk in. Torches of the sort they had used in camp would just have made them better targets, so the darkness was absolute there, with all men as shadows.

  Those closest to the walls had mounted ranks of shields on wooden frames against pistol shot. Some of the soldiers actually slept, while others sat by cooking fires or played dice and cards. Their kit lay all around and Hondo only worried Deeds would trip on one of the shields or spears left in piles by their owners. The sword saint and Taeshin went through the army like ghosts, staying as close as they could to the river bank.

  Hondo could see the fireship coming closer. One of the masts had been unstepped, so that only a single cross showed. It made it harder for any breeze to get purchase and spoke of careful planning. He needed to get on board and at that moment the barebones ship was too far from the bank to consider leaping for it.

  He sweated as he ran, more from the sense of helplessness than exertion. He had to get aboard! He could not watch another ship drift by to blow the walls of Darien apart. He’d seen the cracks on the right side of the river gate as he’d set the ropes, great yawning openings where the mortar had broken. He was not sure it would hold even until the morning, but another explosion would surely bring that entire section down.

  Looking into the night, Hondo did not see the line that snagged him until it tangled his steps and brought him down with a crash.

  ‘Watch what you’re doing, you fool!’ came a voice.

  Hondo didn’t reply as he was still held. His priority was getting free. Taeshin crouched at his side and found the fishing line, cutting it in two places.

  ‘Are you …? Hey, don’t cut it!’ the voice went on.

  In his consternation, the man did not notice they were not his people. Hondo killed him quickly and silently, letting the body slip into the waters. The voice had been very young. It was odd to think of some enterprising soldier setting a line and hook to fish in the river while he waited. Hondo felt no pang of regret, however. He had walked through hundreds of the dead up on the walls.

  As he crouched there with Taeshin and Deeds, flames began to lick out of the fireship’s side, illuminating a rickety pier and a fishing boat with a single mast, forty yards or so ahead. Taeshin saw it as well and they set off together, ignoring Deeds as he hissed questions.

  Hondo searched for oars, but they had been taken by the owner, no doubt to prevent exactly this sort of opportunistic theft. He cursed. An army rested alongside that bank and they were not all fools. Guards and sentries were up and alert, looking for anything out of place. Yet he sat in a boat, with a fir
eship about to pass him, looming large over the water and casting its own shimmering light on the surface reflection. In a moment, Hondo knew the light would reveal the three of them, sitting like helpless mice to be captured or killed.

  ‘Use your hands as oars,’ Deeds hissed in the darkness.

  The gunman tried to reach down, but even lying flat, he was too far from the surface of the river.

  ‘Your swords, then!’

  ‘I will not do that!’ Hondo replied, appalled. The Ling sword was a year’s work from a master and incredibly valuable. He had won it in a tournament of all Shiang and its provinces. It was not a tool!

  ‘Then that ship will go past,’ Deeds said. He did not sound disappointed, not now he had seen the gleam of flames in the hold.

  Hondo cursed. He drew his sword and cut the rope with it that bound them to the little pier. With a huge shove, Taeshin pushed them out into the current as the fireship came alongside. For just a moment, Hondo thought they might reach it, but the current took hold and they began to drift, moving further from the larger hull.

  Hondo swallowed as he lay on the bow. He could hear the cheering of thousands as he had accepted the Ling sword.

  ‘Please, sword saint,’ Taeshin said. He handed over his own blade, still in its scabbard. ‘Use mine. Not the Ling.’

  Hondo nodded in relief and Deeds muttered about foreign idiots as Hondo swished the scabbarded blade through the water, poling them into the main channel. Shouts sounded on the bank, not a dozen yards away. Deeds ducked down in the boat when he realised they would be silhouetted against the fireship for precious moments. As he had the thought, he heard a crackle of gunfire and swore.

  ‘Paddle with it, would you!’ Deeds growled at Hondo.