by Stephen Hunt
‘Why?’ yelled the man. ‘Why were they aiming at us?’
They weren’t.
‘Because you’re here,’ said Jacob.
‘What can I do, Father?’
‘Go to the ramparts and put a bullet in the head of the first of the bastards that tries to storm the wall.’
‘Is that what the scriptures teach?’
‘No, I reckon that’s a lesson from an artillery shell.’
‘I don’t want to fight them; I don’t want to kill anyone.’
Jacob knelt down beside the weeping husband. ‘Get into a cellar. I’ll fight them for you.’
‘But you’re just a pastor, what can you do?’
I’m not even that. ‘They murdered the priest. I’m all that’s left.’ Jacob reached out to touch the man’s arm, as though sharing a confidence. ‘I’m going to kill Bad Marcus. I’m going to kill his Vandians and his slavers and every one of his filthy allies. I’m going to kill so many of them that the Broadaxe is going to turn red with their blood.’
‘Father, please, you’ve gone mad, the bombardment’s snapped your mind.’
‘No,’ said Jacob, blinking away the tears for this man’s love lying in the ground, missing an arm and half her face. ‘But they’ll wish I had when this is over. I’m sorry they butchered your wife, but I’ll make it up to you, I swear it.’
He pushed away the costermonger’s trembling hands. The man started begging the pastor to join him in a cellar, shouting that Jacob would die outside. ‘I’ve already died twice. What’s a third time?’ muttered Jacob. He stumbled back into the smoke, heading for the address on the paper.
He heard Mary’s voice calling through the cinders and the choking clouds. How many corpses do you need to pay for mine, Jacob? A hundred?
‘More,’ he coughed.
A thousand?
‘More.’
A hundred thousand?
He wiped the tears from the biting hot smoke out of his eyes. ‘Quicksilver’s just getting started.’
But I didn’t love him. I never loved him.
‘I know: I changed for you. And I grew soft enough to lose you. You had the wrong man protecting you, Mary.’
How many’s enough?
‘How many do Bad Marcus and his Vandians have to send after me?’ Jacob yelled into the flames. ‘Three armies and an empire’s worth! And when they get truly desperate, they’ll send their skel slavers too. Everyone, I need every last one of them!’
How can I ever love you again?
‘You can’t. You— Can’t.’ Jacob weaved his way through the city, grabbing fleeing soldiers and citizens, seizing those fighting the fires in lines with fire buckets, shaking the directions out of their confused mouths. ‘I’d come back for you, Mary, if I could.’
But she was gone. Almost everything is. Hard to tell which way was which when the city was burning. ‘This will be my war,’ he muttered. Soon enough it will be mine. Just survive the siege. A little bit longer. But Jacob had one life to save, one life for the empty side of the ledger before he began adding to the already packed tally on the opposite side. The newspaper boy was right about one thing … the stink of the tannery district was enough to banish the cinder and gunpowder miasma of the siege. Jacob followed the scent and found the address. Wedged in between the tanneries and warehouses stood a tall tumble-down three-storey building wearing moss-covered slate tiles like a worn hat, a hanging sign swaying in the wind with the painting of a bed, and an equally faded wooden sign above the door which bore the words Mrs Sackville’s Workingmen’s Boarding House for those who could read. This was the address. The front door swung inward, not locked and hardly on its hinges. A hallway. An old woman sat behind a wooden porter’s booth in the entrance, presumably Mrs Sackville, a staircase on her right leading up to the rooms. Another thing that could be said of the stench of the tanneries outside: it masked the damp wood and musty unclean smell inside the flophouse.
‘You have a lady staying here on the third floor?’ Jacob’s voice was hoarse and just talking hurt.
‘I’d say I do,’ said the old woman. ‘Along with a bunch of cheap Gidorian traders. They’ve all gone, but she’s still here, dearie. Knew she wasn’t any Gidorian. Weylander, same as you or me, what with that fluting northcountry accent. You come to take her away before the loyalists come marching through? You tell her that she has to pay for her rooms, you hear! She’s staying in my most expensive accommodation. Half my tenants have skipped their bills, off with the first whiff of grapeshot in the air.’
‘Take me to her,’ said Jacob. He placed a silver shilling on the guest book right in front of the owner. He hacked and cleared his throat. Raw from the smoke of the burning city; as though he’d been drinking cheap whisky for the best part of the day. ‘I’ll give you another just like it to cover her rent. But I need her. I need to save her.’
‘Do you, you say? Better you should chant your prayers for the whole city, Father.’ The old woman whistled unhappily, but opened the swing door inside her porter’s booth and came out to tramp up the rickety staircase, her bones creaking along with the floorboards.
‘I’ll give you some advice,’ said Jacob. ‘Follow your tenants and get out of the city while you can.’ I don’t want to slay you too.
‘I’m of no age to be bothered by the likes of those fine southern gentlemen outside the city,’ said Sackville as she opened the door while knocking on it and calling out, ‘A visitor for you, dearie!’ She moved out of the way and indicated the pastor could enter.
‘This place will burn like tinder before you ever put the manners of those fine southern gentlemen to the test,’ said Jacob. ‘I know them.’ I was them. A wooden-floored room sat inside, three doors leading off to other quarters. An expensive purple dress was stretched out on the bed next to an open travel case, shot silk, next to a couple of long Gidorian cape-cloaks. ‘Willow?’
‘Here she be,’ cackled the old woman. Jacob felt the cracking impact of a lead sap swinging against the back of his skull, his vision darkening as the floor rose up to greet him. The last thing he heard was Mrs Sackville’s crowing laugh fading into the darkness.
Duncan had been present at the final battle of the slave revolt as well as the slavers’ raid on Northhaven, so the siege of Midsburg might be counted as his third experience of warfare, but the vista stretched before him bore little relation to his previous two experiences. This was war in all its organized, terrible panoply. Midsburg’s high outer stone walls stretched out a mile in front of Duncan, manned by soldiers and cannons, the walls’ frontage a blackened, ash-scattered landscape where cheap wooden slum dwellings had been cleared to give the defenders a clear line of fire. Hastily dug defensive ditches, trenches and triangular dirt-packed bastions had replaced the slum town and encroached into the farmland beyond. Midsburg was protected to the north by forests and enclosed on the east and south by a rolling hogsback called Signal Hill, which had fallen to the southern regiments the day before and was now occupied by the best part of the Army of the Boles’ artillery; cannons and limber at the front and cauldron-shaped bombards behind, lobbing shells in high arcs onto the city’s battlements, redoubts and counterscarps.
The horse artillery fired from behind the ruins of round stone towers, strongholds which until recently had stood as sentries over Midsburg. Now they were little more than granite roundels, mounds of shattered stone and brick, the first line of Midsburg’s defences to feel the force of the siege. Duncan’s father rode grandly up and down behind the gun carriages, barking orders and encouragement – both largely superfluous – at the gunners. They know their business. As soon as one of the twelve pounders bucked and sent a shell spinning towards Midsburg, an artilleryman came sprinting to swab the barrel while his comrades lugged the next round forward. Perhaps seventy cannons were rippling in unison while their shells broke against the walls a mile away. Their horse teams and ammunition piles lay safe on the southern side of the slope, inconveniencing the train of co
urtiers and camp followers taking their refreshment around burning braziers, frolicking as though this battle was little more than a stage play laid on for their diversion.
Across the flat land on the southern side of the hills, protected from the wall-mounted batteries’ counter fire, a vast tented encampment had been set up by the Army of the Boles, guarded by the attackers’ reserve companies and the bulk of Vandian legions in the field: soldiers, armoured vehicles and grounded helo squadrons. Prefect Colbert and his proud southern gentlemen hardly needed the imperium’s forces to win this siege, not that they had any choice in the matter. The rebels fought bottled up in the city and operating without a functioning skyguard; Midsburg was protected by walls built to discourage periodic strikes by bandits, slavers, barbarians and nomadic horsemen, not its own royal army.
Duncan almost pitied the pretender and his rebellious assemblymen. You’re lucky Lady Cassandra is inside the city, or furnace shells would be raining down on you, too, by now. But there was no fire storm in the city yet. Prince Gyal needed the empire’s blood-price paid in flesh. Midsburg’s citizenry and the rebel survivors would be the main payment. Duncan experienced a twinge of unease but shrugged it away as quickly as it rose within him. I shouldn’t feel pity for them. They’re rebels, traitors to the lawful king. A life sentence of slavery inside the imperium is better than they deserve.
King Marcus’s loyalists and their Vandian allies hadn’t had things all their own way, however. It was too cold for the southern regiments to easily dig their own siege works in the farmland between the city and the hills, but they had done their best to complete their encirclement anyway, using the questionable cover of the farms, hedges, orchards and field walls to mount their attack. The bodies of dead sappers in royal blue uniforms scattered in front of the rebel bastions spoke volumes for how fierce the opposition still was. A number of downed helos cratered the landscape, too; smoke rising from blackened wreckage. Duncan could tell that the Vandians had initially underestimated the northerners’ skills in shooting down attacking aircraft, paying a heavy price for their arrogance. The sport of firing the heavy tripod-mounted anti-aircraft rifles had been practised for centuries in Weyland, and while the helos could hover and skim low to the earth, landing and taking off vertically, they were still slower than fast-moving skyguard fighters. The large spinning rotor on top of a helo presented a most attractive target for marksmen. Weylanders trained on geese, wild duck, waterfowl and pheasant; in times past, the nation’s sovereigns had offered royal bounties on any bird brought down by powder and ball, merely to encourage commoners to regularly practise with their fowling pieces. In the normal course of events, this siege could have lasted for weeks, many months even, if the rebels showed the spirit to go to ground in the city’s rubble and make the attackers fight for each street. Not this time. The king’s foreign allies would ensure matters moved far faster than that. Duncan approached the staff command post, set up inside the cleared ruins of one of the defensive towers, seeking out Princess Helrena among the banks of Vandian radiomen, loyalist staff officers and their noble allies.
‘Still no word from Paetro and his raiders?’ asked Helrena.
Duncan shook his head forlornly. What’s happened to you, man? The soldier was always so unswerving, a rock you could rely on to bear any weight. The same worries crawling through Duncan’s mind must be going through Helrena’s. That Paetro or Lady Cassandra, or both, were dead. Why haven’t the rebels demanded terms and threatened their hostage yet? He bit his lip. Has Willow found a new way to ruin me? Wrecking the rescue mission despite everything she thinks is at stake for her? Duncan wouldn’t put it past his sister.
At the foot of Signal Hill, six southern infantry regiments assembled behind the cover of a series of apple orchards. They were out of sight from the ramparts, but not entirely out of danger, with shells from wall-mounted cannons falling short of the hilltop’s batteries and exploding among the gathering battalions. Nothing risked the sky, scouting for the assembly’s side, now. The paltry few skyguards flying for the north had either been shot down in the opening hour of the siege or withdrawn to safer airfields in the shadow of the Sharps Mountains.
‘This is taking too long,’ said Helrena. ‘Paetro is beyond overdue. Midsburg is going to fall shortly. Have you ever seen the aftermath of a siege? It is never a pretty sight. We usually have to hang a few of our own legionaries just to send them the message that it’s time to halt the slaughter and drag their spoils back to barracks.’
‘If Cassandra is inside there for that …’ Duncan couldn’t bear to imagine what might happen to his young charge in such carnage.
‘I want you to be one of the first through the breach,’ said Helrena. ‘The Twelfth Armoured Legion is to be given that honour, I understand. Join them. Your king’s intelligencers believe that Cassandra is being held in the cellars below the state building where the rebel assembly holds its congress.’
My king? Hardly that, now. Duncan glanced over towards Prince Gyal. He was laughing with Baron Machus and the prefect in charge of the southern army, Hugh Colbert. ‘Have orders been passed to the legionaries to bring Cassandra back alive?’
Helrena nodded grimly. ‘So I have been informed.’
They both knew what had been left unsaid. How much cleaner for Prince Gyal if his marriage to Helrena began unencumbered by complications, by past burdens. And the winds of war, well, how many sad fates were caught in such gusts? A bullet in the head. A knife in the heart. Ashes in the ruins of the cellar and they would never know what had happened to Cassandra. Gyal might be holding back from ordering his capital ships to flatten the city, but there were still plenty of ways for Helrena’s daughter to meet with an unfortunate ‘accident’.
‘I could take a helo and have it drop me inside the city,’ said Duncan. ‘As long as we’re not shot down, it’d get me there faster …’
‘And then what, Duncan? The time for subtleties is past. I don’t require diversions and raiding parties, now; Paetro and your sister are already playing that hand for us and I fear they have failed. We must move and move with force. Pound Midsburg into rubble and park our armour on what remains of their streets. Hang the rebel politicians, officers and nobility from the lampposts one by one until someone hands her over.’
‘Very well. I’ll join the Twelfth.’
He gazed down towards the legion he was to serve with. On the southern side of the hills, the armoured column carried by the Vandian punishment fleet had turned the fields into churned mud with their tracks, metal colossuses surrounded by companies of waiting Vandian legionaries playing cards and tossing dice. There were sixty or so large tanks, each a mobile fortress on steel tracks and each slightly different, a personal expression of their engineers’ skill in the weapon mills of Vandis. Some mounted two turrets on the front, as well as a pair on the rear and a central rotating cannon turret; others had a massive squat single mortar-style cannon, or a single round rampart with a porcupine-configuration of multiple cannons aimed in every direction. He could hear the rumble of engines coughing out smoke, setting the farmland a-tremble, steel hulls painted in a mixture of camouflage patterns from previous campaigns as well as prows rendered as fierce animals – turrets with tiger eyes and jungle stripes, armoured skirts covered with swirling dragon hides, and all with flags and pennants snapping in the cold wind. Scattered among the idling metal vehicles sat lines of landed helos, rotor blades turning slowly, ready to lift in support of the ground-based armour. These helos weren’t troop transports, but dedicated attack machines, craft of war heavy with rocket pods and armoured gun turrets, nicknamed pepperpots by the legions after the large fuselage-mounted missile tubes.
Duncan shook his head sadly, pitying the northerners inside Midsburg. You’ve never fought anything like this before. If you knew what was awaiting you, you’d toss the rebel assemblymen out on their ear, fall to your knees and surrender now. While the Vandian fighting vehicles were an eclectic assortment of designs, the imp
erium’s infantry marched in a more uniform fashion. Vandia’s legions appeared oddly archaic on the surface, perhaps fighters from the Empire of Persdad beyond the plains; each legionary heavily armoured around the chest, greaves for the legs as well as armguards, with a shining helmet protected by long cheek-guards. At first glance the steel-backs’ armour might be taken for the silver breast plate and helmets worn by one of Weyland’s elite mounted lancers, but in reality it was far lighter, not metal but a hardened artificial substance that could slow, turn and even stop a long-range bullet. Their helmets, similarly formed to the breastplate – proof to sabre cuts and spear-heads and anything other than point-blank pistol discharges – fielded transparent bubble visors to protect its occupant’s eyes. Each helm had been mounted with a brush-like crest of crimson hair; the only difference between soldiers and their commanders being longitudinally-mounted crests for humble legionaries while officers wore transversely-set plumes. Every legionary carried a short-sword for hand-to-hand fighting, but the real force they wielded was a heavy metal rifle slung over their shoulders, fed by clip or drum, and at least thrice the weight of a simple Landsman lever-action rifle. Duncan had considered the automatic weapons used by Helrena’s house miraculous enough compared to the firearms he had grown up with, but they were next to nothing compared to the guns issued to the imperial expeditionary force. Each weapon a factory of death, able to spew bullets at a speed capable of decapitating an enemy warrior at close range: a single legionary was capable of laying down the fire of an entire Weyland company. Two cables joined the rifle to a backpack carried by the legionary; the first supplying water to cool the rifle’s barrel, the second a cable connected to the battery pack, powering a complex automated loading and firing mechanism. Duncan had heard from Doctor Horvak that there was nothing the imperium’s neighbours feared so much as Vandia’s armoured legions and their deadly rifles, all such guns strictly controlled by the emperor’s armoury inside the capital and only issued when his legions and house troops marched to war under the imperial banner. Better you had handed over the rebellious slaves and Lady Cassandra and begged forgiveness, emptied your prisons and turned your inmates over to Prince Gyal as his blood-price. Now everyone will pay for the crimes of a few reckless fools.
