The black prism l-1

by Brent Weeks

  For a moment he saw the city walls as the men in front of him disappeared in a ditch before scrambling up the other side. He remembered dismissing these walls not even a week ago. Now they looked pretty impressive. The side of the wall was encrusted with slums like barnacles, and King Garadul's men were already swarming there, trying to use the low buildings and rough shelters as a ladder. But even in the brief glimpse Kip had, one of the slum buildings on which the men were climbing teetered and then collapsed, crushing men and sending up a cloud of dust.

  Something wet and chunky splattered across Kip's face as he ran. He turned, vaguely saw a man dropping beside him-and then the ground suddenly wasn't where it was supposed to be.

  He went down hard in the dry irrigation ditch. He skidded on his face, flipped over, rolled, the wind knocked cleanly out of him. As he moaned, struggling to regain his breath, he realized he wasn't alone. The irrigation ditch was full of men cowering inside its marginal cover.

  Master Sergeant Galan Delelo appeared back on the lip of the ditch. "Get up, you pathetic rats! They've got an angle right into this ditch from the wall, you damn fools. Get up! If you're anything less than dead, get up or I'll shoot you myself!"

  For a second, no one moved.

  "You wouldn't," a man said.

  The master sergeant drew a pistol and shot him in the belly. "Who's next?" he yelled. He pointed his other pistol at a man carrying a large robin's egg blue sack.

  "I'm a messenger!" the man screamed.

  "You're a soldier now," Master Sergeant Delelo shouted. He was either unaware or just didn't care about the musket fire raining around him, sending up little puffs of earth. "Now, move!"

  The man dropped his messenger sack, grabbed Kip's musket, and ran forward, along with everyone else.

  Lying on the ground, Kip was left with the other corpses. When he had his breath back, he touched the side of his face. Gore, gray-red chunks of… He didn't want to think about it. What mattered was that he was free. At least until the next officer commandeered the cowards who filled up this ditch again.

  There wasn't much time. If Kip thought too much or waited too long, he wouldn't move, and he needed to move now. The master sergeant was right, this ditch wasn't out of the line of fire. If Kip waited, he was going to get killed.

  He wanted to see more of the battle, make a good plan. He didn't know what kind of a judge he would be of whatever he saw, and he didn't even know which way to run.

  He grabbed the messenger's sack and slung it over his shoulder. He saw the wreck of a wagon farther back away from the wall.

  Did we run right past that? Kip hadn't even noticed. Regardless, the oxen who'd been pulling the wagon were dead or mewling, screaming in pain, bloodied. Kip ran for it.

  He ducked into the shadow of the wagon and found two other men already there. They looked at him with wide, fearful eyes. "Move!" he shouted.

  Kip climbed up on the wreck and looked out on the plain. At first all he saw were the dead bodies. Several hundred perhaps. Mostly he couldn't see any blood, so it looked like people sprawled about sleeping. It wasn't so great a toll, considering how big the army was, Kip thought, but seeing so many dead wasn't really something he could merely think about. Those people were dead. He could have been one of them. He could still be.

  He tore his eyes away, tried to look for something useful. In a few spots at the wall, King Garadul's men had actually reached the top of the wall. There was fighting in three or four places, defenders and attackers alike being thrown off, grappling, puffs of black smoke erupting everywhere from musket and pistol fire.

  To Kip's left, there was a slight hill, out of range of musket fire from the wall. There were several hundred horsemen and drafters around the hill. In front of the hill, drafters were crafting a bridge over the irrigation ditch. Kip saw then that the original bridge had been destroyed by the retreating people of Garriston. It had slowed King Garadul's advance, probably more because they'd stopped to talk about it than if they had simply charged the horses through.

  At the top of the hill, Kip saw standard bearers and a figure who might have been King Garadul himself. He was shouting, making huge animated movements toward Lord Omnichrome, who was unmistakable because he literally glowed in the early morning light.

  Kip didn't realize he'd made a decision until he found himself running. He snatched a musket from the ground next to a woman curled in the fetal position, moaning, and kept running. His vengeance was this close.

  As Kip approached the hill, movement began on the hill and rapidly spread, horns sounding orders. It was a few seconds before Kip saw the horses moving. King Garadul was advancing on the wall-personally, right toward the Mother's Gate. Was he trusting that his men would open the gate by the time he got there, or was he just an idiot?

  Kip was halfway up the hill when he saw a woman whose form seemed familiar. He stopped.

  Karris White Oak had flagged down one of the horsemen heading after King Garadul. The man slowed down for her, and she swung up into the saddle behind him with surprising grace. The man turned in the saddle to ask her a question, and then tumbled out. Kip saw the quick gleam of a dagger, then it was sheathed, and Karris kicked the horse's sides and went speeding after King Garadul. She was going by herself, and with her eye caps still on. She wouldn't be able to draft, but she was still going to try to kill him. Even if she were successful, it would be suicide.

  I swore to save her. And I swore to kill him.

  Kip was a terrible rider, but there was no way he could catch up without a horse. Seeing horses tied up near the crown of the hill, he headed straight for them.

  "… through the Lover's Gate. You'll have to swim. Join the refugees. He'll-"

  Kip rounded a tent in time to see the young drafter Zymun swing up into a saddle. He was taking orders from Lord Omnichrome himself. Kip's heart leaped. They weren't twenty paces away.

  "You need a horse?" someone said, right at Kip's elbow.

  Kip almost jumped out of his skin. He blinked stupidly at the groom.

  "Rough work out there, huh?" the groom said.

  "Message!" Kip said, remembering he was carrying a messenger bag. "Message for the king! Yes, a horse! I need a horse."

  "I figured," the man said. He went off to find a beast large enough.

  Kip looked back toward Lord Omnichrome and Zymun. He missed whatever else they said, but he saw Lord Omnichrome hand a box to the mounted drafter.

  That box. Kip couldn't believe it.

  That was his box. Right size. Right shape. That was his inheritance. The only thing his mother had ever given him. And Zymun had it.

  Zymun bowed to Lord Omnichrome. Kip sank back as the young drafter pulled his horse around and galloped away to the east. Lord Omnichrome strode back toward the crown of the hill. The groom brought Kip a horse and helped him mount and stash the musket in a sleeve beside the saddle.

  Kip looked, torn. Lord Omnichrome was disappearing up the hill, rejoining his entourage. He was the heart of this; Kip knew it. He should kill him. Orholam, his chance was passing through his fingertips. But to the south, Karris was charging to her death, and to the east, that snake Zymun was stealing the only thing Kip had to remember his mother by. Kill Lord Omnichrome and stop the war. Kill Zymun and take the knife. Or save Karris and have a chance at King Garadul. Kip couldn't get them all.

  Kip had made his oaths to the living and to the dead. He gritted his teeth, sure he was making the wrong decision-and making it anyway. It's better that the innocent should live than that the guilty die. Gavin loved Karris, and he deserved another chance at happiness. Kip rode after her.

  Chapter 83

  Karris had never fought in a full-scale battle before, but she had watched several with Gavin's general Running Wolf. In another age, he would have been revered as a great leader. Instead, he'd faced Corvan Danavis, and been thrice bested by smaller forces commanded by the mustachioed genius. Regardless, he'd been a kindly older gentleman with a soft spot f
or Karris, and he would explain to her what he was seeing as the distant lines clashed. Of course, he was often too busy to tell her much, but at other times it seemed to help him to think out loud. So now as Karris galloped down the hill and headed toward the fray, she was able to piece together more than she would have otherwise.

  The buildings propped against both sides of the wall-the feature that would eventually doom it, Karris was sure-were actually helping in the short term. They were like a talus slope, wide enough that it encumbered anyone bringing forward siege ladders, and too unpredictable to charge men straight up at any one place. Eventually, King Garadul's men would figure out which places were stable and how much weight they could support, but until then the collapsing buildings killed and slowed the men attacking the wall.

  As Karris rode in, drafters appeared at the top of the wall en masse for the first time. The wall wasn't high, but it was wide enough for the defenders to move along the top at great speed, and they'd seen King Garadul's cavalry coming here.

  Reds and sub-reds worked in teams from the top of the walls, one flinging sticky pyre jelly down onto the attackers, and the other setting it alight. King Garadul had a line of his own drafters up front, blues and greens attempting to divert the pyre jelly in midair and throw it back at the wall. Reds threw their own luxin up at the defenders on the wall, though Garadul's teams weren't as good at getting it alight every time. On both sides, musketeers did their best to pick off drafters.

  The defenders were getting the best of it, but there were simply so many attackers, Karris didn't see how they could possibly hold out for long. And why had King Garadul brought his cavalry here now? Directly against the wall, their maneuverability was negated and they made easy targets for the blue drafters at the top of the wall, who would pop up from behind the crenellations, fire off a few daggers of blue, and then duck back down.

  All Karris had to do was muscle her way through the crowd-not hard when you were mounted-steal a musket, stay alive long enough to get close to King Garadul, and blow his head off. In the heat and fury and blood and confusion and cacophony of battle, it was quite possible no one would even realize the killing shot had come from behind him.

  Karris heard a yell behind her, somehow different from the rest of the screams. She turned her head, still leaning low over her galloping horse. A dozen Mirrormen, coming after her on their gigantic chargers. Her heart convulsed.

  So the subtle approach isn't going to work.

  She picked at the eye caps again. The skin at the corner of her eye was tearing, but she wasn't any closer to pulling the damned things off. If she could draft, she would have a chance. She pushed down the sudden flood of red fury with effort.

  Eighty paces out, she saw a line of musketeers reloading. She scanned the crowd for anyone bearing a flintlock-a matchlock wouldn't work for this. Then, slowing her horse to get the timing right, she swept in just as one of the officers finished reloading and hefted the musket up to his shoulder. She snatched it right out of his hands.

  Commander Ironfist had often chided her for her trick riding, for practicing things they both knew had no use beyond impressing the Blackguard's new recruits. A vision of the big man's head shaking in amused surrender went through her head as she jammed the musket into the saddle sleeve. She was wearing this damn dress that left her half naked and half totally restricted. She wasn't really going to-Karris kicked her feet free of the stirrups, turned her wrist behind her back to get a firm grip on the cantle, tucked the reins between horse and pommel, and dismounted as the horse continued at a canter. She hit the ground and instantly leapt, twisting, feeling the sleeves of her dress rip. She'd always practiced this with a better cantle, but she'd also practiced on taller horses, and she almost flung herself over the side of the saddle on her way back up. It took a half a moment, but she settled into the saddle, backward. She drew the musket, leveled it, trying to absorb as much of shock of the horse's cantering in her knees as she could, trying to time how long it would take between trigger pull and musket fire. She aimed at the lead Mirrorman forty paces behind her and pulled the trigger.

  She'd aimed perfectly, timed everything right, but the musket didn't fire. She cocked the flintlock again, checked the mechanism. No flint. It had fallen out, probably during her impressive trick riding. Bollocks!

  Karris threw the musket away, reversed her hands, turned her head over her shoulder to make sure she'd be leaping off flat ground, and dismounted. The reverse dismount and remount was actually much harder than the original trick, but she did it perfectly, both feet hitting the ground, pushing off in tandem just as the pull of the horse's forward motion catapulted her into the air. Except as she was pulled up and forward, half of her horse's head was torn off by a musket ball and its body dove for the earth. If she'd still been holding the reins, she'd have been flung to earth too. Instead, she became a human cannonball. The force of her jump and the horse's sudden dive had her twisting like a cat. She was flying, upside down and backward.

  Time only for one thought: Roll when you hit.

  But when she hit, there was no time for anything at all. Whatever it was, there were multiple levels, and it was mercifully soft-which didn't stop it from whipping her head and limbs in different directions. When she finally hit ground, she couldn't move for a few long seconds.

  Someone was cursing. She saw feet. She was lying on top of a man, and he was struggling to get out from under her. She must have crashed into the backs of half a dozen soldiers-and taken them all out with her. One man had his leg twisted at a nasty angle. Another turned to look at her, his nose fountaining blood, cursing.

  A huge explosion took away whatever he was saying. Perhaps sixty paces away. Everything seemed to freeze for a moment on the battlefield, then things began moving too fast to take them all in at once.

  Karris jumped to her feet-and almost collapsed. She was so lightheaded that it took all of her concentration not to fall. She checked herself quickly. There were stinging abrasions on her arms and legs, dress in pathetic shape, but no serious wounds. She touched her eyes. The eye caps were unbroken, of course. And smudged with blood so they were harder to see through. Just perfect.

  Now that she was in the midst of the battle, the world narrowed. There were images like little paintings, but no whole. Karris saw a drafter up on the Mother's Gate-Izem Blue? What was he doing here? He stood, skin fully blue, both arms extended, shooting blue daggers in rapid succession-an absolutely stunning display to work so fast, keeping his will focused, shooting from both hands. He was like a dozen musketeers-three dozen, despite the hazy quality of the morning's misty sunlight. Everywhere he turned, men went down. He turned toward the Mirrormen, and Karris saw those blue blades shearing off in every direction from the mirror armor, chewing through everyone around the Mirrormen, but sometimes catching a chink or hitting the mirror armor flat enough that a knife punched through.

  A body stood in front of Karris, headless, its neck spraying blood in time with the last beats of its heart.

  The sound of muskets firing and the roar of blood in her ears melded together, a pulse, life and death twined together.

  The Mirrormen surged toward a hole in the wall, perhaps seven paces across. So that was where the explosion had been.

  A red drafter-one of King Garadul's Free-had gone mad. He was cackling, throwing pyre jelly on everyone around him. The men splattered with the stuff were shouting in fear. Someone was begging him to stop.

  A man was falling off the shattered edge of the wall, slipping, screaming.

  Off to one side atop the wall, the sun gleamed off a man's copper hair. Karris's eyes locked on him. Gavin! He leaned close to another man, issued an order. Corvan Danavis. So the man really was a general. And he was here? Gavin clapped the man on the shoulder, and they parted.

  Karris turned, remembering the pursuing Mirrormen, perhaps too late.

  The leader was twenty paces back, horse surging through the lines, shouting at men to move aside, sword
drawn. He was alone, his men cut off behind him by a sudden sideways surge in the line, but he was too close. Karris was unarmed and still wobbly on her feet.

  Ten paces away, her pursuer seemed to jump in his saddle. Karris could see the whole front of his body, so he hadn't been shot from the wall, but nonetheless, he tumbled out of his saddle.

  Someone had killed the man from behind. What the hell? Karris looked behind the man.

  Kip.

  Kip? The young man was riding at a full gallop behind the Mirrormen, following the path they'd pushed open through the ranks of soldiers. But he didn't have a musket.

  Instead, he was carrying a big green ball, larger than his own head. His skin was green, and he had a wild look in his eyes-and he looked like he was going to tumble out of the saddle at any moment.

  Not seeming to care that he was guiding his horse directly into other horses, Kip drew the green globe backward like he was throwing a ball-classic tyro misperception, they always thought that because a ball had mass, you had to muscle it. Kip's arm came forward, and then with an audible pop he shot the green globe out at the Mirrormen.

  It caught one in the side of his mirrored helmet. The mirror armor sheared luxin easily, but it still had to deal with the momentum of what was hitting it. A breastplate might withstand a bullet, but the man inside was still going to have some broken ribs. Here, the man's head snapped to the side, blasting him out of the saddle, and the green globe ricocheted off, hitting another Mirrorman's shoulder and not quite dismounting him, then caromed into a third Mirrorman's horse, catching the animal on the side of its head and knocking it off its feet.

  The force of the shot blew Kip out of his own saddle, almost halting all of his forward motion. His horse shied, trying not to collide with the others at the last second, but they had been startled by riders falling and a giant green ball flying past their heads, and one dodged directly into its new path. Animal collided with animal at great speed, crunching a Mirrorman's leg that was trapped between them.