‘Uh, in case Korbal Broach tries the rooftops.’
In a city of widely spaced domes?
‘The point I was trying to make,’ Buke continued, ‘is that there’s eyes on the house. Luckily, Bauchelain’s still holed up in the cellar, which he’s turned into some kind of laboratory. He never leaves. And Korbal sleeps during the day. Gruntle, what I said earlier—’
Gruntle cut him off with a sharply raised hand. ‘Listen,’ he said.
The two men stood unmoving.
Distant thunder beneath their feet, a slowly rising roar from beyond the city’s walls.
Buke, suddenly pale, cursed and asked, ‘Where’s Stonny? And don’t try telling me you don’t know.’
‘Port Road Gate. Five squads of Grey Swords, a company of Gidrath, a dozen or so Lestari Guard—’
‘It’s loudest there—’
Scowling, he grunted. ‘She figured it’d start with that gate. Stupid woman.’
Buke stepped close and gripped his arm. ‘Then why,’ he hissed, ‘in Hood’s name are you still standing here? The assault’s begun, and Stonny’s got herself right in the middle of it!’
Gruntle pulled free. ‘Sing me the Abyss, old man. The woman’s all grown up, you know – I told her – I told you! This isn’t my war!’
‘Won’t stop the Tenescowri from lopping off your head for the pot!’
Sneering, Gruntle pushed Buke clear of the door. He gripped the weighted bar in his right hand and in a single surge lifted it clear of the slots and let it drop with a clang that echoed up the corridor. He pulled the door open, ducking to step through onto the stairwell.
The sound of the assault was a thunderous roar once he reached street level and emerged to stand in the alley. Amidst the muted clangour of weapons were screams, bellows and that indefinable, stuttering shiver that came from thousands of armoured bodies in motion – outside the walls, along the battlements, on either side of the gate – which he knew would be groaning beneath repeated impacts from battering rams.
At long last, the siege had unsheathed its sharp iron. The waiting was over.
And they won’t hold those walls. Nor the gates. This will be over by dusk. He thought about getting drunk, was comforted by the familiar track of that thought.
Movement from above caught his attention. He looked up to see, arcing in from the west, half a hundred balls of fire, ripping paths through the sky. Flames exploded within sight and beyond as the missiles struck buildings and streets with hammering concussions.
He turned to see a second wave, coming in from the north, one of them growing larger than the others. Still larger, a raging sun, flying directly towards him.
With a curse, Gruntle flung himself back down the stairwell.
The tarry mass struck the street, bounced in a storm of fire, and struck the curved wall of the Camp not ten paces to one side of the stairwell.
The stone core punched through the wall, drawing its flames after it.
Rubble showered the burning street.
Bruised, half deafened, Gruntle scrambled free of the stairwell. Screams sounded from within the Uldan Camp. Smoke was billowing from the hole. Damned things are firetraps. He turned as the door at the bottom of the stairwell banged open. Buke appeared, dragging an unconscious woman into the clear.
‘How bad?’ Gruntle shouted.
Buke glanced up. ‘You still here? We’re fine. Fire’s almost out. Get out of here – go run and hide or something.’
‘Good idea,’ he growled.
Smoke cloaked the sky, rising in black columns from the entire east side of Capustan, spreading a pall as the wind carried it westward. Flames were visible in the Daru quarter, among the temples and tenements. Judging that the area safest from the burning missiles would be close to the walls, Gruntle set off east down the street. It’s only coincidence that Stonny’s ahead, at Port Road Gate. She made her choices.
It ain’t our fight, dammit. If I’d wanted to be a soldier I’d have joined some Hood-damned army. Abyss take them all—
Another wave from the distant catapults clawed paths through the smoke. He picked up his pace, but the balls of fire were already past him, descending into the city’s heart and landing with a staccato drum-roll. They keep that up and I’m liable to get mad. Figures ran through the smoke ahead. The sound of clashing weapons was louder, susurrating like waves flaying a pebble beach. Fine. I’ll just find the gate and pull the lass out. Won’t take long. Hood knows, I’ll beat her unconscious if she objects. We’re going to find a way out of here, and that’s that.
He approached the back of the row of market stalls facing Inside Port Street. The alleys between the ramshackle stalls were narrow and knee-deep in refuse. The street beyond was invisible behind a wall of smoke. Kicking his way through the rubbish, Gruntle arrived at the street. The gate was to his left, barely visible. The massive doors were shattered, the passageway and threshold heaped with bodies. The block towers flanking the aperture, their blackened sides bearing white scars made by glancing arrows, quarrels and ballista bolts, were both issuing smoke from their arrow-slits. Screams and the clash of swords echoed from within them. Along the wall platforms to either side, soldiers in the garb of the Grey Swords were pushing their way into the top floors of the block towers.
Thumping boots approached from Gruntle’s right. A half-dozen Grey Sword squads emerged from the smoke, the front two ranks with swords and shields, the rear two with cocked crossbows. They crossed in front of the caravan captain and took position behind the pile of bodies at the gateway.
A wayward wind swept the smoke from the street’s length to Gruntle’s right, revealing more bodies – Capanthall, Lestari, and Pannion Betaklites, continuing down the street to a barricaded intersection sixty paces distant, where there was yet another mound of slain soldiers.
Gruntle jogged towards the troop of Grey Swords. Seeing no obvious officer, he elected the crossbow-woman nearest him. ‘What’s the situation here, soldier?’
She glanced at him, her face a flat, expressionless mask covered in soot, and he was surprised to realize she was Capan. ‘We’re clearing out the towers up top. The sortie should be back soon – we’ll let them through then hold the gateway.’
He stared at her. Sortie? Gods, they’ve lost their minds! ‘Hold, you said.’ He glanced at the arched passage. ‘For how long?’
She shrugged. ‘Sappers are on their way with work crews. There’ll be a new gate in a bell or two.’
‘How many breaches? What’s been lost?’
‘I wouldn’t know, citizen.’
‘Cease your chatter over there,’ a male voice called out. ‘And get that civilian out of here—’
‘Movement ahead, sir!’ another soldier shouted.
Crossbows were readied over the shoulders of the crouching swordsmen.
Someone called from outside the passageway, ‘Lestari Troop – hold your fire! We’re coming in!’
There was no relaxing evident among the Grey Swords. A moment later the first elements of the sortie trundled into view. Cut and battered and bearing wounded, the heavily armoured foot-soldiers began shouting for the Grey Swords to clear a path.
The waiting squads split to form a corridor.
Every Lestari among the first thirty who passed through was encumbered by a wounded comrade. From beyond the gateway the sound of fighting drew Gruntle’s attention. It was getting closer. There was a rearguard, protecting those bearing the wounded, and the pressure on them was building.
‘Counterattack!’ someone bellowed. ‘Scalandi skirmishers—’
A horn moaned from high atop the wall to the right of the south-side block tower.
The roar was growing from the killing field beyond the gateway. The cobbles beneath Gruntle’s boots trembled. Scalandi. They engage in legions of no less than five thousand—
Ranks of Grey Swords were assembling further down Inside Port Street, swordsmen, crossbowmen, and Capanthall archers, forming a fall-back line. A
n even larger company was gathering beyond them, along with ballistae, trebuchets and hurlers – the latter with their buckets of scalding gravel steaming like cauldrons.
The rearguard stumbled into the passage. Javelins sliced among them, glancing off armour and shield, only one finding its mark, sending a soldier wheeling with the barbed shaft through his neck. The first of the Pannion Scalandi appeared, lithe, leather-shirted and leather-helmed, wielding spears and scavenged swords, a few with wicker shields, pushing against the yielding line of Lestari heavy infantry, dying one after another, yet still more came on, voicing a keening warcry.
‘Break! Break!’
The bellowed command had an instant effect, as the Lestari rearguard suddenly disengaged, spun round and bolted down the corridor, leaving their fallen behind – to be claimed by the Scalandi, dragged back, vanishing from sight. Then the skirmishers boiled down the passageway.
The first line of Grey Swords re-formed in the wake of the Lestari. Crossbows snapped. Scores of Scalandi fell, their writhing bodies fouling the efforts of those behind them. Gruntle watched as the Grey Swords calmly reloaded.
A few from the front line of skirmishers reached the mercenary swordsmen, and were summarily cut down.
A second wave, clawing past their fallen kin, surged towards the line.
They withered beneath another flight of quarrels. The passageway was filling with bodies. The next mob of Scalandi to appear were unarmed. Whilst the Grey Swords loaded their crossbows once more, the skirmishers began dragging their dead and dying kin back through the passageway.
The door to the left-side block tower slammed open, startling Gruntle. He spun, hands reaching for his Gadrobi cutlasses, to see a half-dozen Capanthall stumbling into view, coughing, blood-smeared. Among them: Stonny Menackis.
Her rapier was snapped a hand’s length down from the tip; the rest of the weapon, down to and including the bell-hilt and its projecting quillons, was thick with human gore, as was her gloved hand and vambraced forearm. Something slick and ropy hung skewered on the thin blade of the main gauche in her other hand, dripping brown sludge. Her expensive leather armour was in tatters, one crossing slash having penetrated deep enough to cut through the padded shirt underneath. Leather and shirt had fallen away to reveal her right breast, the soft, white skin bearing bruises left behind by someone’s hand.
She did not see him at first. Her gaze was fixed on the gateway, where the last of the corpses had been cleared, and yet another wave of Scalandi was pouring through. The front ranks fell to the quarrels, as before, but the surviving attackers rushed on, a frenzied, shrieking mob.
The four-deep line of Grey Swords split once more, wheeled and ran, each half sprinting for the nearest alley to either side of Port Street, where Capanthall archers stood, waiting for a cleared line of sight on the Scalandi pursuers.
Stonny barked a command to her few comrades, and the small troop backed away, parallel to the wall. She then saw Gruntle.
Their eyes locked.
‘Get over here, you ox!’ she hissed.
Gruntle jogged up to them. ‘Hood’s balls, woman, what—’
‘What do you think? They boiled over us, through the gate, up the towers, over the damned walls.’ Her head snapped back, as if she had just taken an invisible blow. A flat calm settled over her eyes. ‘It was room by room. One on one. A Seerdomin found me—’ Another jolt ran through her. ‘But the bastard left me alive. So I hunted him down. Come on, let’s move!’ She snapped her main gauche back at Gruntle as they hurried on, spraying his chest and face with bile and watery shit. ‘I carved him inside out, and damn if he didn’t beg.’ She spat ‘Didn’t work for me – why should it have for him? What a fool. A pathetic, whimpering…’
Hurrying in her wake, it was a moment before Gruntle understood what she was saying. Oh, Stonny …
Her steps slowed suddenly, her face turning white. She twisted round, met his eyes with a look of horror. ‘This was supposed to be a fight. A war. That bastard—’ She leaned against the wall. ‘Gods!’
The others continued on, too dazed to notice, or perhaps too numb to care.
Gruntle moved to her side. ‘Carved him from the inside out, did you?’ he asked softly, not daring to reach out and touch her.
Stonny nodded, her eyes squeezed shut, her breath coming in harsh, pained gasps.
‘Did you save any of him for me, lass?’
She shook her head.
‘That’s too bad. Then again, one Seerdomin’s as good as another.’
Stonny stepped forward, pressing her face into his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Let’s get out of this fight, lass,’ he murmured. ‘I got a clean room, with a basin in it and a stove and a jug of water. A room, close enough to the north wall for it to be safe. It’s at the end of a hallway. Only one way in. I’ll stand outside the door, Stonny, for as long as you need. No-one gets past. That’s a promise.’ He felt her nod. He reached down to lift her up.
‘I can walk.’
‘But do you want to, lass? That’s the question.’
After a long moment, she shook her head.
Gruntle lifted her easily. ‘Nap if you’ve mind to,’ he said. ‘You’re safe enough.’
He set off, skirting the wall, the woman curling up in his arms, her face pressed hard against his tunic, the rough cloth growing wetter there.
Behind them, the Scalandi were dying by the hundreds, the Grey Swords and Capanthall delivering dread slaughter.
He wanted to be there with them. In the front line. Taking life after life.
One Seerdomin was not enough. A thousand would not be enough.
Not now.
He felt himself grow cold, as if the blood within him was now something else, flowing a bitter course along his veins, reaching out to fill his muscles with a strange, unyielding strength. He had never before felt such a thing, but he was beyond thinking about it. There were no words for this.
Nor, he would soon discover, were there words to describe what he would become, what he would do.
* * *
The slaughter of the K’Chain Che’Malle by the Kron T’lan Imass and the undead ay had thrown the Septarch and his forces into disarray, as Brukhalian had predicted. The confusion and the immobility it engendered had added days to Shield Anvil Itkovian’s preparations for the siege to come. But now, the time for preparing had ended, and Itkovian was left with the command of the city’s defences.
There would be no T’lan Imass, no T’lan Ay, to come to their rescue. And no relieving army to arrive with the last grain of the hourglass. Capustan was on its own.
And so it shall be. Fear, anguish and despair.
From his position atop the highest tower on the Barracks Wall, after Destriant Karnadas had left and the stream of messengers began its frenzied flow, he had watched the first concerted movement of enemy troops to the east and southeast, the rumbling appearance of siege weapons. Beklites and the more heavily armoured Betaklites marshalling opposite Port Gate, with a mass of Scalandi behind and to either side of them. Knots of Seerdomin shock troops, scurrying bands of Desandi – sappers – positioning still more siege weapons. And, waiting in enormous, sprawling encampments along the river and the coast, the seething mass of the Tenescowri.
He had watched the assault on the outside fortification of the Gidrath’s East Watch redoubt, already isolated and surrounded by the enemy; had seen the narrow door battered down, the Beklites pushing into the passageway, three steps, two steps, one, then a standstill, and moments later, a step back, then another, bodies being pulled clear. Still more bodies. The Gidrath – the elite guards of the Mask Council – had revealed their discipline and determination. They expelled the intruders, raised yet another barricade in place of the door.
The Beklites outside had milled for a time, then they renewed their assault.
The battle continued through the afternoon, yet each time that Itkovian pulled his attention away from other events he saw that the Gid
rath still held. Taking enemy lives by the score. Twisting that thorn in the Septarch’s midst.
Finally, near dusk, siege weapons were wheeled about. Huge boulders were hurled against the fortress’s walls. The pounding concussions continued as the last of daylight fell away.
Beyond this minor drama, the assault against the city’s walls had begun on all sides. The north attack proved a feint, poorly executed and so quickly recognized as insignificant. Messengers relayed to the Shield Anvil that a similar cursory engagement was under way at the west wall.
The true assaults were delivered upon the south and east walls, concentrated at the gates. Itkovian, positioned directly between them, was able to directly oversee the defence on both sides. He was visible to the enemy, and more than one missile had been fired in his direction, only a few coming close. This was the first day. Range and accuracy would improve in the days to come. Before long, he might have to yield his vantage point; in the meantime, he would let his presence mock the attackers.
As the Beklites and Betaklites rushed the walls, the ladder-bearing Desandi among them, Itkovian gave the command for counterfire from the walls and block towers. The ensuing slaughter was horrific. The attackers had not bothered with turtles or other forms of cover, and so died in appalling droves.
Yet such were their numbers that the gates were reached, battering rams deployed, and breaches effected. The Pannions, however, after pushing through the passageways, found themselves in open concourses that became killing grounds as Grey Swords and Capanthall archers launched a withering crossfire from behind barricades blocking side streets, intersections and alley mouths.
The Shield Anvil’s strategy of layered defence was proving murderously efficient. Subsequent counterattacks had been so effective as to permit sorties beyond the gates, a vicious pursuit of fleeing Pannions. And, this day at least, none of the companies he’d sent out had gone too far. Discipline had held among the Capanthall, the Lestari and the Coralessian companies.
The first day was over, and it belonged to Capustan’s defenders.
Itkovian stood on trembling legs, the coastal breeze building to dry the sweat from his face, sending cool tendrils through the half-visor’s grille to brush his smoke-reddened eyes. As darkness closed around him, he listened to the rocks pounding the East Watch redoubt, and turned for the first time in hours to view the city.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 208
