Gates of Stone

by Angus Macallan

  “That is all I needed to know,” said Semar, standing up and stretching his arms and shoulders, rubbing his wrists. He seemed to be bigger, taller even. All traces of the sad, bound captive were completely gone. He was fully in control of the room. “I suspected that you would betray us, old friend. I read that destiny in your face decades ago. But I was not certain until tonight that you had really joined Mangku’s murderous cause, and I could not understand why you might choose to side with the sorcerer. I suppose I do, now, and I am better equipped to stop this madness. Anyway, we will be leaving shortly, Ratna, with the object we came for, the Key of Power—Jun, you won’t forget to collect the Khodam before we go, will you, my prince?—and so I will bid you farewell. I would strongly advise you, old friend, to pack up your belongings and leave Singarasam this very night. And I earnestly hope we do not meet again. If we do, I greatly fear that I may forget my sacred vows and take away your miserable life.”

  Semar bent down and picked up his staff from the blood-sticky marble of the floor. He looked again at Ratna Setiawan. “You may have set Hiero Mangku on this evil road, old friend, but if you think you are still his Master, you are sorely mistaken.”

  “Did I hear someone mention my name?” said a new voice, a voice like flint.

  And Hiero Mangku stalked into the Audience Hall.

  CHAPTER 44

  In the late afternoon, Katerina stood by the entrance to the command dugout, with Colonel Wang at her shoulder. On either side of her in a series of zigzags, the trenches of the Legion extended from the Grand Harbor to the Small. Every few paces there were pockets of men, sitting, sleeping, eating the rice and beans that had been provided as rations, looted from the abandoned city around her. She looked up through the shattered ruins of houses and workshops to the scarred gray walls of the Governor’s Palace, three hundred paces away.

  The ship Egil had done sterling work over the course of the day, pounding the walls of the last bastion under Federation control in Istana Kush. The bombardment had been slow, steady, a measured reduction of the fortifications, and now a V-shaped breach ten paces wide at the top yawned in the center of the north wall, slightly to the right and below the Round House. A spill of rubble from the broken battlements tumbled down from the breach toward the city, forming a rough and treacherous stair up to the hole in their defenses. She could see the forms of men and women inside the breach, working furiously wrestling lengths of timber, tables, chairs, even what looked like rolled-up carpets into the gap to make a makeshift barricade. In the deepest recesses of the hole, she thought she could just make out a very fat woman in a bright pink dress waving her arms about, giving orders. Was that this Mamaji person? What kind of woman was she? Formidable, clearly.

  As she watched, another cannon shot roared out from the ship in the Straits, smashing into the side of the breach, knocking free a patch of wall, turning a heavy wooden table to matchwood and showering the workers inside with lethal shards. A man in the scarlet coat and white cross belts of a Dokra staggered into view and fell out, limp as a rag doll, bouncing down the slope of scree, his red turban coming loose, trailing after him, the body cartwheeling and thumping into the dry ditch at the bottom of the wall.

  Behind her Colonel Wang was having an urgent, almost-passionate conversation in his own language with one of the handful of Legionnaire engineers. It seemed clear to her that the good Colonel was not getting the answer that he required.

  Since the shocking disasters of the morning, the news of the day had steadily improved. She had received a report that the Yotun had managed to haul itself off the submerged rock on which it had become impaled—and it seemed that the ship could be saved. By dint of hard work, martial efficiency and a fair bit of luck, with a spare sail strapped tight over the massive hole that had been ripped in her timber bottom, the Yotun had managed to limp across the Sumbu Strait to the north side of the Grand Harbor and a vacant drydock. Now emptied of men, stores and guns, Yotun was careened on her side and a crew of carpenters was crawling all over the hull, fitting replacement planks, replacing the futtocks, caulking seams with hot pitch and generally mending her poor, broken timbers with as much speed as they could muster. It would take some days before the huge vessel could swim again, but Katerina’s flagship was not lost to her, and that was a comforting thought. The Sar was another matter. Divers were at work salvaging as much as they could from the sunken ship. It would never sail again and, for now, all her naval power resided in little Egil.

  “What does he say?” asked Katerina. “Does he think the breach is practicable?”

  “Alas, no, Highness. Engineer Fung thinks it needs to be a good deal wider, perhaps five paces wider. He also believes that it would be wise to open a second breach farther along the wall, perhaps even a third, so that the defenders must spread their forces. He says that in another day or possibly two days of steady bombardment the Governor’s Palace will be as open and inviting as the legs of a . . .” Wang stopped himself. He sometimes forgot that his commander was a highborn lady not a hard-bitten ranker. “I mean to say that in two more days, at this rate, we should be able to storm the palace with relative ease.”

  “I don’t have two more days. Word of our attack must have reached Singarasam by now. I expect the Federation to be on our doorstep at any moment. I must have the palace, today, tonight at the latest. What say you, Colonel? Can your brave Legionnaires force that breach as it is now?”

  “Well . . .” Wang was torn between telling the honest truth and giving his commander the answer that he knew she desperately wanted. “It would be extremely bloody. The casualties would be heavy, Highness, very heavy. Even then I’m not sure they could . . .”

  “We don’t have the luxury of choice, Colonel. You will order the attack. Tell the men that there will be a bonus of a hundred crowns to the first man through the breach. And once inside they may loot the Governor’s Palace to their heart’s content.”

  “Highness, I am bound to say that I don’t think this is the wisest course.”

  “Just do it, Colonel. All my life I have been told that the Legions are the finest, bravest troops in the world. Let them prove it. I shall send word to Egil to cease bombardment in one hour, and your assault will go in then. Give the orders, now, if you please.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The Legionnaires advanced in two columns. Katerina watched from the dugout as two fat snakes of hundreds of blue-coated men emerged from the trenches, one headed for the left side of the breach, the other the right. They moved slowly, keeping formation, muskets strapped across their backs to leave their hands free to climb, wending through the broken houses of the city, parts of each column temporarily lost from sight, only to reemerge as each obstacle was passed.

  The guns of the Egil had fallen silent a quarter of an hour ago and the sudden quiet after a day of noise was wonderful. She looked up at the cannon-scarred walls again and saw that a rough wooden barricade had been constructed, a ramshackle-looking thing, in the very mouth of the breach. Spear blades, old knives and broken-off swords had been attached to the beams of the barrier, making the hedge of sharp steel known as an Ehrul Horse that her men would have to negotiate, and farther back she saw scores of dark faces under scarlet turbans, and a wink of a bronze cannon in the light of the sinking sun behind her.

  It was going to be bloody. There was no getting away from that. But truly these Legionnaires were exceptional men. They were the bravest and the best in the world, and what she had said to Colonel Wang had been true: they had no more time to make a bigger breach. If the Federation arrived now, even just one decent-sized warship, Katerina was done for. There were no reinforcements coming for her; she had no spare troops at her beck and call. She had to attempt this. It was do or die. This throw of the dice or damnation.

  The two thick blue columns were nearly at the dry ditch before the rubble slope that led up to the breach. Yet there had b
een no response so far from the palace. The quiet was eerie now, horrible, to be exact. The traditional calm before the storm of battle. For a moment she allowed herself to wonder if the defenders had decided to quietly slip away—the Small Harbor was still open to them. She had deliberately told her men to allow any who wished to leave to do so unmolested. There were even still a few small ships moored there. But she knew that it was not to be. She would not lie to herself. If this Mamaji was the person she believed she was, she would not run. She had sent men to the Green Fort—a suicide mission if ever there was one—and they had sunk the Sar. Mamaji must know that time was on her side. That if she could hold out, salvation was at hand. No, Mamaji would not run. And she would ensure all her fighting men remained with her, too.

  The roar from the left-hand column of Legionnaires snapped her out of her thoughts. The men in blue were charging up the rocky slope in front of the breach, yelling their hearts out, scrambling on the shattered rock, using hands and feet to propel themselves forward, upward. Their shiny helmets flashed orange in the dying light. A flood of blue surging up the rocky stair. On the battlements above, on either side of the breach, suddenly there were scores of heads, hundreds of musket men. Now the first ragged volley from the walls, hundreds of tiny puffs of smoke—and her Legionnaires began to die.

  The left-hand column was halfway up the slope now, and the right-hand was beginning its own ascent, too. Musket balls from the top of the wall were smashing into them, thumping into blue-clad flesh, tossing bodies backward into the press of men behind. Some of the Legionnaires were stopping to return fire, and here and there on the walls a turbaned head was snatched away. But most of her men were ignoring the fire from above, scuttling up the steep slope in a rushing tide of human flesh, knowing that safety only lay beyond the yawning breach. Katerina could clearly hear the strike of lead bullets on stone, the thump as they punched into human meat and the screams of the men cut down. Arrows and spears, too, were now lancing down on the attackers, skewering men, pinning limbs to the rubble. A shower of rocks, hurled from the battlements, thudded into the Legionnaires’ unarmored bodies, clanging off helmets, but still her brave men came on, driving upward, scrambling up toward the breach, now only a few steps away.

  Nearly there, nearly there, and once inside their fury would be unconstrained. The leading man was just feet from the opening, within touching distance of the Erhul Horse. He was unshipping his musket from his back, pointing it into the darkness of the breach. The hundred crowns was his if he could live a few moments longer. A single musket barked from inside and the bullet tore away half his face and he fell back. But his comrades were all around him now, surging forward into the gaping maw of the palace, shouting their fear away, twenty men, thirty, with more coming up hard on their heels, some impaling themselves on the sharp points of the Erhul Horse by the press of the men behind them . . .

  The cannon bellowed from inside the breach. A spray of canister lashed out from the brass muzzle, hundreds of musket balls spreading out in a cone of destruction, and wiping the leading Legionnaires away in an instant, hurling a dozen shattered bodies back down the slope, and leaving nothing but a mist of blood where they had been and a few scraps of flesh on the dripping steel points of the Ehrul Horse.

  But these men were Legionnaires, the best in the world, and a second wave immediately came surging forward into the blood-dripping mouth of the breach, yelling hatred and defiance—and were met by a massed musket volley from a hundred Dokra waiting inside.

  The survivors, a few gore-slathered men crazed with pain and rage, came on again, hauling their bodies over the sharp steel barricade heedless of the cuts from the keen-whetted blades. The Dokra were reloading, furiously slamming bullet, powder and wad down the barrel with their long wooden rammers. The entrance to the breach was filled with men in blue, screaming, shooting blindly into the thick smoke inside.

  The second brass cannon spoke, the canister ripping the living flesh from the fragile bodies of the Legionnaires, blasting them apart and once more the breach was cleared.

  The Dokra rushed forward into the fog, stopping at the Erhul Horse and pouring their fire into the Legionnaires still on the slope. Loading, ramming, firing, killing.

  Through the drifting smoke, Katerina could just make out Colonel Wang, at the head of the right-hand column, almost at the top of the blood-soaked rubble stair, the dead men thick about his boots. A few paces from the breach, he half turned and bellowed to the men behind him, urging them onward. A Dokra sergeant shot him straight through the back of his head, dropping his body in a boneless, undignified heap.

  The remaining Legionnaires screamed their rage and boiled up the last few yards of the slope, crashing into the Erhul Horse, and were met by the Dokra, men firing into each other at point-blank range, clubbing each other with empty muskets, stabbing with bayonets, hacking with swords, grappling, clawing, swinging bloody fists. Two thick lines of struggling men separated by a barrier of wood and sharp iron. Through the drifting powder smoke, Katerina saw a Legionnaire hauled forward by two Dokra, his body forced onto the blades of the Erhul Horse. A man in blue reared up from the mass and stabbed his bayonet into the armpit of the right-hand Dokra. He, in turn, was promptly pistoled in the face by a Dokra officer, hurled back into the throng of his comrades. Above the scrum of Legionnaires, the defenders on the walls rained down fire and stones, bullets, arrows, spears—all falling like a lethal curtain, punching into bodies, crushing bones, ripping skin, blood spraying about the breach like a dozen untended water hoses.

  The Legionnaires recoiled, pushed back from the breach, then they gathered themselves for one last effort, the dead and wounded tangling the legs of the living, a man with a drawn sword, face blackened by powder and blood, leading the charge. The Dokra had pulled back suddenly from the lip, leaving dozens of their own casualties impaled on the barricade. Fifty men in blue, many wounded or bloody lunged forward in a howling mass at the Erhul Horse, shooting blindly, stabbing with their bayonets, some trying to rip the sharp blades free from the wooden barricade with their bare hands. One huge Legionnaire seemed to have got under the biggest cross timber and was lifting it with his back, shoving it aside with main strength to make room for his comrades to flood in. The huge, metal-spiked balk of wood was rising, rising . . .

  And another blast of canister blew him and a dozen of his comrades to bloody rags. The Dokra returned, muskets reloaded, some now with sidearm pistols, and smashed a devastating volley into the dazed and bloodied men cowering on the rubble outside.

  Then it was over. The Legionnaires were running, scrambling down the slope, tripping over the wounded and dead, stumbling but fleeing as fast as they could—and leaving a reeking, steaming, writhing mound of their own people on the lip of the breach.

  * * *

  • • •

  Katerina felt cold and sick as she witnessed the slaughter of her soldiers. The long stair of broken rock was thick with corpses, hundreds of dead, the rubble at the top entirely carpeted with blue, and the 42nd Legion was now in full retreat; even the wounded were crawling down the slope to escape the murderous hail of missiles from the walls, which had neither slackened nor ceased with the retreat. A thin line of red-coated Dokra at the lip of the breach continued to flay the fleeing troops, the mercenaries firing muskets at will and dropping man after man, and leaving no one in any doubt who the victors of the contest had been.

  The first survivors were at the base of the rubble slope, and noncommissioned Legion officers down in the dry ditch, whistles blowing, were directing them back up the other side and away to their trenches. Blinded men, or men missing parts of their limbs, men who were blood-drenched, powder-blackened and completely spent trickled back toward the start position. Some merely collapsed on the city road, sinking to their knees, toppling over, unable to force themselves to go a single step farther now that they were out of range of the killers on the walls. There were a few score
among them who were not visibly injured, white-faced, shaking men, many without muskets, but men who were at least bodily whole.

  “Well, that’s that,” said Major Sung, who was standing beside Katerina, his arms held rigidly behind his back, his face pale. “What are your orders, now, Highness?

  “Could we try one more time with the reserve. Could we send them in again?”

  “Again?” He stared at her as if she were mad. “Did you not see what just took place up there? Were you not paying attention? You just slaughtered more than a third of my Legion, woman, in a scant quarter of an hour. And you want to send them in again?”

  Katerina did not care for the way the major was speaking to her—but neither could she stem her sickening flood of guilt at the failure of the assault. It was, indeed, entirely her fault. Colonel Wang had tried to warn her—but she had insisted. One last throw of the dice. And she had lost. Now the Colonel was dead. And she had killed or wounded hundreds of her men, her fine, loyal men along with him. Looking out over the blood-rinsed slope, the human wreckage strewn along it, the shattered men limping back toward their trenches, she knew herself to be close to tears. But she knew if she wept now, it would open a floodgate.

  “You had better run along and see to the wounded, Major Sung,” she said curtly. “We shall hold our position here for the time being. Double rations and a double tot of marak to all the men tonight, I think. And please thank them all for their heroic efforts.”

  Major Sung glared at her, too angry to speak. He turned on his heel and stomped away.

  Katerina slumped into the canvas folding chair at the rear of the dugout. She could have done with a double tot of marak herself; a whole bottle would be nicer. But she resisted the urge to call for alcohol. She must be clearheaded. She must organize her thoughts.