20
On the following morning, the twenty-ninth of Shapru, a section of the ramparts of Pu’er gave one last despairing, dust-choked, mumbling, roar and collapsed into the fosse.
The camp came alive. Trumpets bawled, soldiers streamed past the cage in which Trinesh and his companions were imprisoned, artisans scrambled about, bearing ladders and mantlets and heavy-bladed axes, and the slaves, servants and camp-followers scurried to get out of the way.
As the sun thrust up above the haze the Legions’ sorcerers took their places upon the wooden platform General Vrishtara’s sappers had built for them, divided themselves into their offensive and defensive contingents with much good-natured raillery, and awaited orders. Each Legion fielded its party of trained military spell-casters. All of an army-group’s specialists operated together as one powerful unit during a battle: half erected a defensive shield over their own troops, incidentally damping out all personal magic and even those devices powered by energies from the Planes Beyond; the other half then collaborated to probe and smash through the enemy’s shields with destructive spells. Battlefield sorcery tended to be quite spectacular—and very terrible if pressure and exhaustion caused one’s shields to fail. Trinesh well remembered the skies above the battlefield at Mar: flickering, lowering lightnings of sparkling scarlet; miasmas of demoralizing fear; clouds of noxious gases; and illusions of demons and horrors designed to confuse and terrify. None of these things could do real harm as long as the defensive shields held. He knew of unpleasant historical occasions where they had not.
Sorcery was of vital importance to siegecraft in the Five Empires also. Without protective wall-spells, a city would quickly find itself with no fortifications left. The temples charged exorbitantly for the process, but thereafter a town’s defenses were proof against personal spells, devices employing forces from the Planes Beyond, and the cruder but more potent enchantments of the military magical contingents. Even a smallish cjty like Pu’er was warded in this fashion. Everyone benefited: the temples profited from refurbishing older wall-spells and applying new ones; each city’s rulers and clan-masters slept more soundly; and the artillery Legions had something useful to do.
The little bolt-firing ballistae kept up a steady, rattling bombardment all morning. As the sun neared its zenith, General Qutmu hiTsizena and his staff paraded portentously between the hulking mangonels to take their places upon the command dais. Red copper and bright gold gleamed there amid armor like the brown carapaces of Aqpu-beeties, the gaudy plumes of the Kawg-standards, skull-crested helmets, and the gray sheen of precious steel. Trinesh looked in vain for Direnja hiVayeshtu; he had probably not been invited. The artillery’s work was mostly done, for now, and no mere Kasi would be asked to join the august company of generals and higher staff-officers, the Dritlans and the Molkars, observing the assault.
By noon the rickety, leaning beffroi-towers crouched hungrily along the edge of the fosse, and flights of arrows arced up and then down again in a whispering rain of death. Another Kiren, and the first columns of assault troops emerged from between the tents, their skull-helmets swarming like white-knobbed insects along the trenches and over the filled-in ditch to wash against the sloping plinth of the wall beyond. From this range it was impossible to tell, but Arjasu swore that these were the undead: stolid phalanxes of dull-gleaming weapons, cloaks the color of grave-earth, shields bearing unknown, time-dimmed blazons, and armor of styles now seen only in faded murals and the mausoleums of the dead.
Iridescent green beetles appeared along the top of the ruined parapet. Siege ladders arose, and white skulls met emerald crests there in one continuous, surging, roiling line. A roar went up, a monotonous, prolonged, fearsome “aaaaah.” Gongs boomed—the Yan Koryani preferred them to trumpets— and the white-topped dots retreated to flow down and back.
The gongs clamored defiance.
General Qutmu lifted his baton, and fresh troops poured forth. These were clearly living men. A drum began a staccato tiktikit-tiktikit, and more dust drifted away on the breathless air. A trumpet squalled, and another shrieked in urgent answer. Copper and silver and gold and brown mingled with the azure of the Tsolyani Imperium. Trinesh heard hoarse cheering and smelled leather and sunlight and sweat and fresh-cut wood and baking sand. Other, deeper, drums picked up the cadence: the bronze-hulled Korangkoreng, the gigantic wardrums of the Tsolyani Legions. Tall ladders stretched clawing fingers above the haze. Something cracked like a whip of thunder; ravening light sprang out of the sky above the Battalions of the Seal of the Worm. The sorcerers swayed and chanted in unison upon their platform, and the lightning growled in sulky fury and slid away harmlessly to the north. In reply, a cloud of brown vapor arose to hover above Pu’er’s squat towers, but this, too, dispersed and swept off in rags and tatters as though blown by the wind. Yet the air was still.
White and brown and blue met green again at the top of the shattered battlements. The solid, droning “aaah” became a shriller paean of yelping war cries, then the darker, clattering cacophony of battle. Skull-helmets tumbled down, but the Yan Koryani line along the battlements was left noticeably thinner. The Tsolyani flowed back in disarray, their ladders toppling with them, one after the other. Taking a well-defended wall was no easy task, Trinesh knew.
General Qutmu knew it too. The drums stopped, only to resume with a different, slower rhythm. More brown-lacquered squadrons appeared at the edge of the tent-city: the heavy-armored troops of the Legion of the Scales of Brown. It seemed that Lord Sarku’s minions intended to wipe out the stain of last year’s broken siege in one single, crushing escalade.
More silent contingents came forth, passed between the waiting phalanxes; and plodded away toward the wall. The undead did pot retreat, nor did they falter. Their commanders— the intelligent Jajqi, Arjasu said—marched with them. Ladders were raised yet a third time, and those who had died once long ago in the Worm Lord’s service did so again.
Only a handful of green plumes still showed upon the ramparts.
The drums sang, tiktikit, tik-boom-tik; tiktikit, tik-boom-tik. A screaming clarion split the air, and the heavy infantry rolled ponderously forward. More magic grumbled and shuddered. This time something exploded in a froth of pallid smoke along the parapet, and little green beetles flew up to become red-winged birds before tumbling back down to the stones below. A keening, moaning, belling roar of victory arose from a multitude of Tsolyani throats. The copper-trimmed helmets bobbed and danced below the walls, then surged up and over in a milling, struggling horde. Now no more green beetles were to be seen. The archers spilled down out of their towers to join the melee; all that Pu’er contained was plunder for the seizing. The sorcerers broke ranks to rest and to watch, and the phalanxes of undead halted in silence, almost indistinguishable from the tawny gray desolation of the desert.
General Qutmu turned and descended from his dais amidst the plaudits of his officers. There would be fighting within the city, of course, and some of the foe might hold out for days amid the ruins, in the towers, and in the ancient central citadel. Yet the city was his.
Pu’er had fallen.
Trinesh felt Dineva’s thin, muscular arm about his shoulders. She babbled something jubilant about the battle, but he did not listen. His sunburn still hurt, and he pulled away. Victory was contagious, undead or no, but this was hardly an occasion for rejoicing; the four gaunt stakes in front of their wooden cage bore witness to that!
Trinesh looked again for Direnja hiVayeshtu and saw him this time, standing upon the timbered framework of one of the massive mangonels. The Kasi had not been unreasonable, all things considered. In fact, he had displayed more kindness than many others might have done in his place. He had provided food from his own rations, and he had left Trinesh and his companions their kilts, although their armor and other possessions were confiscated, of course. He had also supplied a roll of matting wherewith to keep off the worst of the sun. Mashyan hiSagai had argued for stripping them all naked and chain
ing them in the latrine-pits, but the artilleryman remained resolute in spite of all her blandishments. These soldiers came of good clans, he said, particularly Trinesh’s Clan of the Red Mountain, and dignity demanded courtesy. He was only a military man doing his duty as he saw it; the penalty for desertion was severe enough without going beyond the letter of the law. Trinesh was grateful. Few Tsolyani minded nudity, but there was an important and none-too-subtle difference between wandering about one’s clanhouse unclad and being exhibited in that condition like a slave or a Hmelu-beast!
Trinesh would have a little more sympathy for those in like circumstances in the future.
If there was a future. That seemed dubious in the extreme.
The fighting continued all day, more troops moving up to the city as the dead and wounded were brought back. Trinesh wondered idly whether some of the slain would know life of a sort again at the hands of the Worm Lord’s brown-robed clergy.
After a time there was nothing more to see, and he squatted upon the planked floor and adjusted the mat to shield himself from the hazy, biting sunlight. Chosun dozed, as he had ever since they were put here; Dineva recited prayers; and Arjasu sat and stared out at the world with the blind look of a killing machine that has nothing left to slay.
in the afternoon there were victory offerings to Lord Sarku and the other gods, singing, rejoicing, and extra measures of wine. Pu’er was not a rich prize, as cities went; Sunraya had held a thousand times its meager treasures. Yet the Worm Lord’s Legions rejoiced as though they had sacked Ke’er itself. Prince Dhich’une’s adherents had had few victories to celebrate during the past year or two.
Sunset brought visitors. Three men and one woman pushed their way through the thronging soldiers to stand before their prison.
“We,” said the eldest, a sallow, plumpish man in a flowing, shapeless robe of purple and orange, “are the Mrikh, the Four sent by the clan of the Company of the Edification of the Soul.”
“No!” Chosun’s head snapped up sharply.
“It is so. 1 am Miga, this is Hargai, the lady is Sihal, and my fourth colleague is Aritl. We are all of the family of hiBashuvra, there being but one lineage in our clan. Tomorrow, at the conjunction of Kashi and the planet Uletl, we shall perform our offices.”
“The horoscope is appropriate,” the second man, Hargai, said. “Red Kashi since you are followers of Lord Vimuhla,
and brown Uletl in honor of Lord Sarku, who has condemned you. There is also a ‘Glance of Brightest Joy’—an aspect of 120 degrees—from Gayel, the moon of Lady Dlamelish, whom your accusers serve. All is loving and auspicious.” “The best moment occurs at four minutes after sunrise,” the woman stated. She was middle-aged, with worn, lumpish features that might have belonged to one of Trinesh’s clan-mothers.
“General Vrishtara’s people make such nice stakes,” the fourth member of the Mrikh observed admiringly. “Whitewashed stone platforms, sturdy ladders, and all the needful.” The horror of their fate became apparent.
“You ? Trinesh got out.
“All is proper,” the sallow-faced man said kindly. “We have brought a pot of red paint so that you may adorn your bodies with the symbols of the Flame—you do all worship Lord Vimuhla, don’t you?”
“And after it is over, we shall see that you are cremated,” Aritl, the fourth of the quartet, added. “Hargai, here, knows the rites of your faith. It is easier when one does not have to scour a city to find a priest of the correct temple.”
“If you would all stand, please,” Miga suggested. “We must see that the crosspieces are affixed to the stakes at the proper heights for your bodies. It is neither noble nor aesthetic to have you sliding all the way down the stake and thrashing about at its base.”
Trinesh discovered that his knees had turned to water. His bowels threatened to follow suit. “There is no—no hope ..'.?” The woman shook her head so that the gray-black bun of hair at the nape of her neck bobbed to and fro. “La! Of course not. —And don’t worry, young man. We’ve done this service for ten score others. It only hurts when the stake first slides in through the organs. With a little care it can be made to pass directly up through the heart. It’s soon over when done skillfully.”
Someone was sick. Trinesh was relieved to find that it was Chosun and not himself.
“They’re not manacled, Miga,” the third man exclaimed. “Will that not be troublesome?”
“1 fear so,” the first replied gravely. “It won’t do to have them windmilling about and kicking. The soldiers must remedy that in the morning.”
The woman smiled. “Here is your Kasi with your dinner. May the Flame Lord take you into His incandescent Paradise. Till dawn, then.” The four bowed and departed.
Direnja hiVayeshtu himself pushed the tray through the slot in the door. “Not much time left. Eat what you can.” The spicy fragrances of his Jakallan dishes were wasted upon those in the cage.
Trinesh turned away, and Dineva made a miserable sound in her throat.
“We are not deserters!” Chosun cried in a choked, desperate voice. ,The Tirrikamu had no fear of death in battle, Trinesh realized, but this sort of relentless, inescapable—and undeserved-—doom seemed to unman him completely.
“Of course you are. Mashyan was right about that.” Trinesh said, “As I told you—and as you admitted yourself—we asked to return to our Legion. The Flame burn you, would deserters do that?” He himself felt better arguing, quarreling, shouting—anything—than when left to contemplate those four neatly hewn stakes.
“If only you’d been cleverer! A stupid story about monsters and magic doorways! Who’s ever seen such marvels? Did you expect me to believe your epic? Nearly six months in the desert, strange clothes, well-fed, and fancy steel armor worth a tax-collector’s teeth! Cha! The spoils of war have been a soldier’s right since the days of Hrugga himself, but absence from duty is either heedless greed or ignoble cowardice! Your men could have died at Fortress Ninu’ur, Hereksa, for lack of your leadership!”
“We did not leave there of our own will!” Dineva shouted.
“So you said, over and over. Yet you did not convince General Qutmu’s officers. Even so, 1 never wanted this for you.” The Kasi glanced back at the silhouetted stakes behind him. “Any believable little lie, and I’d have let you off, but your silly fable hardly gave me a choice. And then Mashyan’s testimony did you no good either. La, she gets all warm and excited at executions. Mashyan should have been a priestess of our Goddess’s Cohort, Lady Hrihayal, who enjoys pain and other curious entertainments.”
“Ai, enjoys!” Trinesh said gruffly. “Enjoys our captive, the Yan Koryani girl!”
“As you enjoy our steel armor!” Dineva accused. She made an obscene gesture.
“Leave us be,” Trinesh sighed. “What’s done is done. The Weaver of Skeins knows when a tapestry is spoiled.”
“It was General Qutmu.” The Kasi seemed eager to make amends. “Even if your own Legion had been there to speak for you, it would have been difficult. Qutmu hiTsizena hates your General Kutume, your Prince Mirusiya, and your Flame itself. Fire does not sit well with his undead monsters.”
“Oh, Chlen-shit. Go away.”
“Look.” Direnja hiVayeshtu sounded both resigned and frustrated. “1 can’t help you, that’s certain. But if you managed to escape tonight during the celebrations and the confusion, I’d tear up your writs of conviction—see to it that you weren’t pursued.”
“Why, damn it, why?" Chosun roared. “Why torment us now?” His huge hands made the bars creak.
“Mashyan leaves within the hour. She’s taking the Yan Koryani girl off to present her as a delicacy to Lady Anka’a. There’s no one to see, to report. By the Emerald Goddess Herself, I value fine troopers, fighters loyal to the Imperium— and you, like me, come of a decent clan, Hereksa. I’m neither zealot nor martinet, and whatever cruel little games Mashyan plays, I am convinced that our Lady Dlamelish prefers warm, living bodies to dead meat stuck up on poles!�
�
In spite of himself Trinesh felt a stab of warmth for the artilleryman. There were moderates, it seemed, in more than one place in the Empire.
“The guards are going to be drunk later. If your mountainous Tirrikamu here can break the bars, you’re free and away.” Trinesh spat. “He's already tried.”
“It’s the best I can manage.” Direnja hiVayeshtu stroked his beard. “If I open that door I’ll take the ‘high ride’ instead of you. The Skein is as it is woven. Do what you can.”
He turned on his heel and left them once more to themselves. They had not long to wait. Their third visitor was the Lady Jai Chasa Vedlan. She had been to see them before, but this time she came alone, without Mashyan hiSagai.
She wore traveling boots of dark green leather, a panelled, tight-fitting skirt of green and white F/rva-cloth laced up the left side to display a teasing gleam of smooth thigh beneath, a silver-tooled cincture about her waist, and, as a concession to the obsessivp modesty of Yan Koryani women, a short blouse that covered her breasts. A mantle of thick, velvety, sea-green Hma-wool swung from a chain about her throat, and she had found a little skullcap of emerald-dyed felt upon which scrollwork designs were picked out in metallic threads.
“La,” Trinesh observed wryly. “A Yan Koryani princess comes to see the Kuruku-beasts.”
“Not the funny little ‘gigglers’ of the forests! More like caged Zrne, all wild and snapping.”
“Ai, Zrne who are soon pelts upon the hunter’s trophy-wall.” He motioned Dineva and Chosun back. “Well, what would you? A delightful gloat? A tear-stained farewell?”
She looked down so that he could not see her face.
More gently, he said, “I never did you ill, Lady.”
“No.”
“And now you go to follow a Skein worse than any I would have woven: a dainty gift to the orgiasts of the Temple of Lady Dlamelish! You, who rejected my advances, those of my men, and even of a Prince of Mihallu—ugly little fop! You were better off with me.”
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