Shadow and Flame

by Gail Z. Martin

  “About two thousand men,” the scout replied.

  “That’s more than they sent the last time,” Folville replied, shaking his head. “Good thing we sent the Cross-Sea pirates to the bottom of the ocean. I’ve got no desire to try to protect the harbor while we’re also trying to keep an invading army from burning the city!”

  “It won’t go well for any of us if Hennoch makes it through that wall, so we’d best make plans to ensure it doesn’t happen,” Voss said in a clipped tone. “I’ve got one thousand men deployed between the coast and Quillarth Castle. They’ve got to help defend the city and the castle—and keep Hennoch from reaching the coast and trying to come around by water. So they’ll be a help, but they won’t all be in position to hold the city wall.” He grimaced. “The rest of my men are at Rodestead House helping hold Penhallow’s territory, too far away to recall on short notice.”

  “Understood,” Folville replied. “Have they finished the chain-and-net barriers?”

  Voss nodded. “Aye. All you asked for, and a few more besides.” He paused. “We’ve got archers on the wall, and my troops are thickest where the wall is weakest. We’ve still got some talishte from Penhallow. Not a lot, but half a dozen or so. They’ll help us fight from sunset to sunrise.”

  “Good,” Folville said. “Captains?”

  Hemmington and Larson exchanged a glance in acknowledgment, and Hemmington spoke. “We’ve got two hundred men from Blaine McFadden’s army,” he said, “and one hundred more off the boat from Edgeland, plus a few hundred that are protecting Quillarth Castle. I’ve assigned our archers to the wall as well, and we’ve got some mages who can help play havoc with their troops—or keep their mages from playing havoc with us.”

  “What about the Badgers and the Red Blades?” Folville asked. “They’ve been quiet. Not that I’m complaining, but it makes me suspicious, and I really don’t want to be attacked from behind by enemies inside the city.” Look at me, Folville thought. I’ve gone legitimate, and I’m out of touch with what’s happening on the street.

  “The Curs have the city-proper staked out for our territory,” Betta replied with pride, though one glance told Folville she had been thinking the same thing. “We pushed them back into the garrison by Quillarth Castle, and the Blades helped force the Badgers outside the walls. For now, the truce is holding.”

  Folville swore. “So they aren’t close enough to backstab us, but they might join up with Hennoch’s troops. Lovely.”

  Betta shrugged. “It’s the best of a bad situation,” she said.

  “How do we know they aren’t already working with Hennoch?” Voss asked. “You can bet Hennoch sent spies before he dispatched an army, and they would have gone right to anyone who’s got a bone to pick with McFadden’s surrogate, and promise the moon in exchange for help.”

  “We don’t,” Piran replied with a sigh. “In fact, we should assume that’s the case.”

  “I’ll check in with my spies,” Betta said. “They’re always watching for outsiders approaching the Blades and the Badgers,” Betta said. “The other gangs are too tight-knit for us to have spies on the inside, but I do have some informants among the mothers, sisters, and girlfriends who don’t approve of the things their men are doing, and they pass me some information from time to time. I’ll see what we can find out.”

  Folville stared at Betta. “Really? Is that something we need to worry about with the Curs, our own families selling us out?”

  Betta grinned. “Of course not,” she said. “Because we’ve got people constantly finding out who needs food, or clothing, or a hedge witch to doctor someone. They need it, the Curs make it happen. And we discourage stupid fights, which keeps their men in one piece. If someone has been kissing up to one of the other gangs, I’ll find out about it. Our spies know where their bread is buttered.”

  Folville turned to Bogdan. “What about the mages?”

  Bogdan nodded in acknowledgment. “We’ve been busy,” he said. “Still working with the mages up at the castle and a couple of the Knights of Esthrane, trying to figure out if any of the artifacts they’ve got from before the Great Fire may be of use. They could only spare two mages from the castle, me and Anders, but we brought a couple of magic items that should help us ruin Hennoch’s day,” he said with a wicked grin.

  “Anything else?” Folville asked.

  “Anders and I have been spending a lot of our time in the towers scrying—which is how the scouts knew where and when to look for the invasion force,” Bogdan answered. “We’ll ‘see’ them coming before anyone else will, if you know what I mean.”

  “Any luck with some real defensive magic?” Piran asked. “Something useful, like blowing people up and knocking people down?”

  Bogdan raised an eyebrow. “We’ve got a few tricks up our sleeves.”

  Folville glanced around the room at his allies, who each gave him a nod as he made eye contact. “Then we all know our parts,” he said finally. “Let’s go—and Charrot keep our souls.”

  The others filed out, and even Betta left with a kiss blown in Folville’s direction. Keeping Castle Reach on a war footing had taken a toll, Folville thought, closing his eyes and letting out a deep breath. He and Betta had not had time together in—too long, he thought.

  He felt far older than the year it had been since the Great Fire fell. A year, and I go from running a gang to running the city, and I’m no richer to show for it. It’s a lousy bargain.

  Two days later, Hennoch’s troops arrived.

  “The nets are up,” Betta reported to Folville as they waited behind the Northern Gate.

  “We’ll see when they realize it,” Folville replied. “Time to get to work,” He turned and yelled for his men to get into position.

  Folville shaded his eyes and looked out from the Northern Gate tower. Hennoch’s army marched toward the city, rank after rank of soldiers, most of them well armored. Hoofbeats and bootsteps thundered between the city walls and the rolling hills beyond.

  “Here comes trouble,” Folville muttered.

  Before the Great Fire and the Cataclysm, the Castle Reach wall had never been breached. Tall and thick, it had been built hundreds of years ago, and reinforced by every king of Donderath, including Merrill. Two city gates granted access, with heavy iron-and-wood doors, iron portcullises, towers, and archers’ slits. The imposing walls and impassable defenses had served the city well, but fire, wild magic, and vicious storms had taken their toll. Several of the towers had fallen, and the wall had collapsed in two places. Hemmington and Voss had assigned soldiers to the effort to rebuild the wall, but the project was only partially complete.

  To the west, the wall enclosed the approach to Quillarth Castle, ending at the Castle’s walls and the high cliffs. To the north, the wall ran the length of the Old City, curving to run east of the shipworks and the Rooster and Pig and ending along the rocky harbor precipice. The harbor itself was the fourth wall, reinforced thanks to the measures taken to thwart the Cross-Sea Kingdoms’ invasion.

  Piran and Hemmington commanded several hundred soldiers at the westernmost breach and the castle gate, while Folville and Larson held the Northern Gate. Voss and a contingent of his troops staked out the breach on the eastern section of the wall. Betta and the Curs patrolled the city and the harbor, to make sure that Hennoch had not managed to sneak a strike force inside the city walls.

  “Getting through Squattertown is going to slow them down,” a soldier next to Folville observed.

  “That’s the idea,” Folville replied, but he felt his stomach clench nervously as the army approached.

  Before the Great Fire, Castle Reach had been a hub for commerce, drawing people from all over the kingdom who hoped to make their fortunes. When the land inside the walls filled to capacity, newcomers erected a sprawling ring of wooden buildings, what those within the main city dubbed ‘Squattertown.’ Much of Squattertown burned in the Great Fire, and since then the ruins stood deserted. But in the last two days, Folville
and the Curs had found a use for the wreckage.

  Folville leaned against the stone sill of the archer slit as he peered out, watching the progress of Hennoch’s troops. As Folville and his allies had guessed, Hennoch had no intention of letting Squattertown slow down his march. They pressed forward, going around the ruined buildings and broken walls, relentlessly fixed on their goal. The soldiers in the front lines wore helmets and carried large shields, making it difficult to target them with arrows. Behind the lines of marching men, there was no missing the war machines Hennoch had brought with him—catapults, trebuchets, and a battering ram, the instruments of a siege. Hennoch was determined to win.

  Yet Squattertown was already working in the defenders’ favor. Hennoch’s soldiers were forced to go around the tumbledown houses and sheds, splitting up their solid line. The narrow streets and low overhangs made it difficult for the soldiers to keep their shields in front of them.

  Folville drummed his fingers nervously as the army marched closer. “I thought your people set traps,” Larson said, coming over to watch the army’s advance.

  “Wait for it,” Folville muttered.

  Halfway into Squattertown, the ruins began to fight back. Fishing nets appeared from everywhere at once: springing up to block streets, falling from overhangs to tangle soldiers in their knots, and suddenly hoisting unwary soldiers high off the ground. Castle Reach had been a busy fishing port, and old, abandoned nets were plentiful. The nets might have been too torn or damaged to catch fish, but they had no difficulty ensnaring soldiers, who cursed and fought to free themselves.

  “Now!” Larson shouted. The catapults on either side of the Northern Gate began firing. Rocks at first, then flaming bundles. The front line of Hennoch’s army took the brunt of the attack, unable to easily turn in the confines of Squattertown’s narrow streets, hemmed in behind by their own companions and tangled in netting.

  The thud of Folville’s catapults echoed from the hills. Hennoch’s war machines were still too far away to hit the city wall, but his soldiers were well within range of Castle Reach’s defenses. Two flaming missiles, one fired from each side, hit the trapped soldiers, setting them ablaze. There was nothing their comrades could do to help, since the fishing nets made it impossible to move quickly or to pull the burning men free. Squattertown’s ruins burned like kindling, with the help of casks of oil and heaps of pig fat Folville’s men had strategically planted in the buildings they targeted with their fiery bundles.

  Archers waited behind crenellations the length of the wall, hoarding their arrows for attackers that came into range. Men with slings crouched at the ready, armed with heaps of rocks and bits of metal. Behind the wall, defiant residents prepared for attack with buckets to fight fires and weapons should the attackers get through the wall. More archers waited at the uppermost windows, and at street level, men and women with slings and homemade pikes mustered to defend what was theirs.

  All the while, the city’s catapults kept up a steady, pounding beat. The catapults kept Hennoch’s soldiers scrambling, smashing unlucky soldiers with heavy rubble or burning more of the ruins with chunks of wood soaked in oil and set aflame. Hennoch’s soldiers spread out, picking their way through the trapped streets of Squattertown. Angered by the nets and fire, they pushed onward, moving a few more blocks closer to the wall.

  “Go!” Folville shouted to Bogdan and Anders, who awaited his word. Beneath the dirt of the Squattertown roads lay rickety boards covering dozens of hastily dug pits deep enough to swallow one or more soldiers. The boards sustained the weight of the attackers only with the help of magic, and with a word, Bogdan and Anders withdrew their power. All along the front line of Hennoch’s advance, soldiers suddenly dropped out of sight, trapped in holes too deep to easily escape.

  Farther down the wall, Folville could hear Voss and Piran shouting commands to their catapult crews, keeping up the nonstop bombardment. “Now!” Piran’s voice rang out. The twang of crossbows added a counterpoint to the beat of the catapults as flaming quarrels targeted the soldiers who struggled forward toward their objective. Archers let loose their arrows, picking off the mounted officers first.

  “Do it!” Folville ordered. Bogdan and Anders moved forward again, raised their hands palms outward toward the attackers, and began a low chant. As the afternoon sun set the abandoned Squattertown in long shadows, nightmarish creatures, barely glimpsed and then gone once more, darted just at the edge of the skittish soldiers’ vision.

  “What in Raka is that?” Frightened cries rose from the advancing soldiers, who were trapped between catapult barrage from the front and the fire behind them.

  “There’s something out there!” Soldiers shouted warnings as the hideous creatures remained just out of their line of sight. Folville chuckled, knowing that Bogdan and Anders were casting a powerful illusion intended to add to the panic.

  “Hold your position!” a voice rang out. Folville peered through the slit to locate the commander. Hennoch rode a large black horse, and he sat near the front line, just beyond the range of the archers. He eyed the wall like a prize he was determined to win.

  Shadow creatures streamed from doorways and windows as the mages gave a final push to their illusion. Men cursed and shouted as tendrils snaked around arms and legs, hideous maws filled with jagged teeth snapped just shy of skin and bone, and monstrous creatures attacked at full speed. Soldiers scattered, and some of the men in their panic fell into the hidden pits or staggered back toward the burning buildings.

  “That’s all we can do for now,” Bogdan said as he and Anders dropped their illusion. Both mages looked worn by the effort.

  “That’s fine,” Larson said, intently watching the enemy’s advance. “You put a scare into them. They won’t be quite so cocky now.”

  Folville kept an eye on the war machines at the rear of Hennoch’s army. Getting them into position would be difficult with the traps Folville’s men had set, but should Hennoch’s men be able to do so, the advantage of the battle could change quickly.

  “We need to take out those bloody machines,” he said as his own catapults kept hammering the invading forces. Much of Squattertown’s remaining buildings were in flames, burning hot with the flammable materials Folville’s men had packed into the ruins. Sections of Hennoch’s army were cut off from each other by blocks of flaming buildings or cross streets intentionally blocked with rubble and netting. Squattertown was a death trap, intended to be the graveyard of any army foolhardy enough to try to move through it to reach the city.

  The afternoon waned, and Hennoch kept up his relentless advance, sometimes gaining only a block or two before having to fall back, then moving forward once more. It was difficult to accurately estimate how many of his troops remained, but to Folville’s eye, he would have guessed that at least a third of Hennoch’s soldiers were dead or too wounded to fight.

  “Why isn’t he giving up?” Larson mused. The catapults and archers on the city walls kept up a relentless assault, mowing down every line of soldiers that ventured within range. Chunks of oil-soaked wood, jugs of oil rigged with cloth fuses, and loads of pig fat made perfect flaming missiles for the catapults to launch into the midst of the invaders. Spattered with oil or melted, burning fat, men shrieked and ran as the flesh burned from their bodies. Still, Hennoch’s soldiers pressed forward.

  Precisely at dusk, the first attack came from the air. “Weapons ready!” Folville shouted, raising his crossbow as a dark shape dove at him from above, teeth bared and clawed hands outstretched.

  “By Charrot—they’re godsdamned biters!” one of the soldiers yelped, barely retaining the presence of mind to squeeze off a shot from his crossbow as the creature came at him with supernatural speed.

  “Fire!” Folville yelled, loosing a shot that caught another talishte in the shoulder, too high to take him through the heart. The attacker swung, and his fist landed a blow that broke Folville’s left arm as it threw him ten feet through the air to land in a tumble against the tower
wall. At least twenty enemy talishte stormed the wall, getting inside the city’s defenses as the attacking army had not been able to do.

  With a groan, Folville dragged himself to his feet, cursing at the pain from his damaged arm. He gripped his sword with his right hand and ran into the fray with a mad battle cry, as the talishte ran at the line of tower defenders, bowling them down.

  Two of Folville’s men battled talishte attackers, and they were getting the worst of it, from what Folville could see. He ran at his opponent just as one of the two fighters managed to land a blow with his knife, stabbing deep into the talishte’s arm, and the second man struck with his sword, opening a gash on the talishte’s thigh.

  The talishte roared with pain and anger, striking a blow that sent one of the men tumbling with the sickening snap of breaking bones. Folville cleared the distance between them as the talishte remained intent on the second man, who continued to battle for his life despite the odds. The talishte lashed out, getting a hold of the second man by the shoulder and casually tightening his grip to break both collarbone and shoulder. Folville launched himself at the talishte from behind, sinking his sword deep between the attacker’s ribs, into his heart. The talishte arched, letting out a deafening shriek of anger and pain, then his body began to tremble, teeth chattering and limbs twitching spasmodically, until his form collapsed into ash.

  More of the dark shapes filled the air, and by their shouts, Folville knew that some of Penhallow’s talishte had risen to defend the city. He glimpsed talishte battling in midair over the flames of Squattertown, darting in and out of the clouds of smoke that rose from the burning wreckage. Some of Penhallow’s talishte had taken jugs of oil with wicks, lighting the crude bombs and then dropping them onto Hennoch’s catapults and war machines, setting the equipment afire.

  “Careful with your arrows,” Folville shouted. “Some of those are on our side!”