‘No.’
Like virtually everyone Gorst ever spoke to, Bayaz was hardly listening. ‘Things don’t change just by the asking. You have to give them a damn good shake. Whoever said war never changes anything, well … they just haven’t fought enough wars, have they? Glad to see this rain’s clearing up, though. It’s been playing hell with my experiment.’
The experiment consisted of three giant tubes of dull, grey-black metal, seated upon huge wooden cradles, each closed at one end with the other pointed across the river in the vague direction of the Heroes. They had been set up with immense care and effort on a hump of ground a hundred strides from Gorst’s tent. The ceaseless din of men, horses and tackle would have kept him awake all night had he not been half-awake anyway, as he always was. Lost in the smoke of Cardotti’s House of Leisure, searching desperately for the king. Seeing a masked face in the gloom, at the stairway. Before the Closed Council as they stripped him of his position, the bottom dropping out of the world all over again. Twisted up with Finree, holding her. Holding smoke. Coughing smoke, as he stumbled through the twisted corridors of Cardotti’s House of…
‘Pitiful, isn’t it?’ asked Bayaz.
For a moment, Gorst wondered if the Magus had read his thoughts. And yes, it certainly fucking is. ‘Pardon?’
Bayaz spread his arms to encompass the scene of crawling activity. ‘All the doings of men, still at the mercy of the fickle skies. And war most of all.’ He sipped from his cup again, grimaced and flung the dregs out across the grass. ‘Once we can kill people at any time of day, in any season, in any weather, why, then we’ll be civilised, eh?’ And he chuckled away to himself.
The two old Adepti from the University of Adua scraped up like a pair of priests given a personal audience with God. The one called Denka was ghoul-pale and trembling. The one called Saurizin had a sheen of sweat across his wrinkled forehead which sprang back as fast as he could wipe it off.
‘Lord Bayaz.’ He tried to bow and grin at once and couldn’t manage either with any conviction. ‘I believe the weather has improved to the point where the devices can be tested.’
‘At last,’ snapped the Magus. ‘Then what are you waiting for, the Midwinter Festival?’
The two old men fled, Saurizin snarling fiercely at his colleague. They had an ill-tempered discussion with the dozen aproned engineers about the nearest tube, including a deal of arm-waving, pointing at the skies and reference to some brass instruments. Finally one produced a long torch, flames licking at the tarred end. The Adepti and their minions hurried away, squatting behind boxes and barrels, covering their ears. The torch-bearer advanced with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man to the scaffold, touched the brand at arm’s length to the top of the tube. A few sparks flew, a lick of smoke curled up, a faint pop and fizzle were heard.
Gorst frowned. ‘What is…’
There was a colossal explosion and he shrank to the ground, hands clasped over his head. He had heard nothing like it since the Siege of Adua, when the Gurkish put fire to a mine and blew a hundred strides of the walls to gravel. Guardsmen peeped terrified from behind their shields. Exhausted labourers scrambled gaping from their fires. Others struggled to control terrified horses, two of which had torn a rail free and were galloping away with it clattering behind them.
Gorst slowly, suspiciously, stood. Smoke was issuing gently from the end of one of the pipes, engineers swarming around it. Denka and Saurizin were arguing furiously with each other. What had been the effect of the device beyond the noise, Gorst had not the slightest idea.
‘Well.’ Bayaz stuck a finger in one ear and waggled it around. ‘They’re certainly loud enough.’
A faint rumble echoed over the valley. Something like thunder, though it seemed to Craw the weather was just clearing up.
‘You hear that?’ asked Splitfoot.
Craw could only shrug up at the sky. Plenty of cloud still, even if there were a few blue patches showing. ‘More rain, maybe.’
Dow had other things on his mind. ‘How are we doing at the Old Bridge?’
‘They came just after first light but Scale held ’em,’ said Splitfoot. ‘Drove ’em back across.’
‘They’ll be coming again, ’fore too long.’
‘Doubtless. Reckon he’ll hold?’
‘If he don’t we got a problem.’
‘Half his men are across the valley with Calder.’
Dow snorted. ‘Just the man I’d want at my back if I was fighting for my life.’
Splitfoot and a couple of the others chuckled.
There was a right way of doing things, far as Craw was concerned, and it didn’t include letting men laugh at your friends behind their backs, however laughable they may be. ‘That lad might surprise you,’ he said.
Splitfoot smirked wider. ‘Forgot you and him were tight.’
‘Practically raised the boy,’ said Craw, squaring up and giving him the eye.
‘Explains a lot.’
‘Of what?’
Dow spoke over ’em, an edge to his voice. ‘The pair o’ you can wank Calder off once the light’s gone. In case you hadn’t noticed we’ve got bigger business. What about Osrung?’
Splitfoot gave Craw a parting look, then turned back to his Chief. ‘Union are over the fence, fighting on the south side of town. Reachey’ll hold ’em, though.’
‘He better,’ grunted Dow. ‘And the middle? Any sign of ’em crossing the shallows?’
‘They keep marching around down there, but no…’
Splitfoot’s head vanished and something went in Craw’s eye.
There was a cracking sound then all he could hear was a long, shrill whine.
He got knocked in the back hard and he fell, rolled, scrambled up, bent over like a drunken man, the ground weaving.
Dow had his axe out, waving it at something, shouting, but Craw couldn’t hear him. Just that mad ringing. There was dust everywhere. Choking clouds, like fog.
He nearly tripped over Splitfoot’s headless corpse, blood welling out of it. Knew it was his from the collar of his mail coat. He was missing an arm as well. Splitfoot was. Not Craw. He had both his. He checked. Blood on his hands, though, not sure whose.
Probably he should’ve drawn his sword. He waved at the hilt but couldn’t work out how far away it was. People ran about, shapes in the murk.
Craw rubbed at his ears. Still nothing but that whine.
A Carl was sitting on the ground, screaming silently, tearing at his bloody chain mail. Something was sticking out of it. Too fat to be an arrow. A splinter of stone.
Were they attacked? Where from? The dust was settling. People shambling about, knocking into each other, kneeling over wounded men, pointing every which way, cowering on their faces.
The top half of one of the Heroes was missing, the old stone sheared off jagged in a fresh, shiny edge. Dead men were scattered around its base. More’n dead. Smashed apart. Folded and twisted. Split open and gutted. Ruined like Craw had never seen before. Even after the Bloody-Nine did his black work up in the High Places.
A boy sat alive in the midst of the bodies and the chunks of rock, blood-sprayed, blinking at a drawn sword on his knees, a whetstone held frozen in one hand. No sign how he’d been saved, if he had been.
Whirrun’s face loomed up. His mouth moved like he was talking but Craw could only hear a crackle.
‘What? What?’ Even his own words made no sound. Thumbs poked at his cheek. It hurt. A lot. Craw touched his face and his fingers were bloody. But his hands were bloody anyway. Everything was.
He tried to push Whirrun away, tripped over something and sat down heavily on the grass.
Probably best all round if he stayed there a bit.
‘A hit!’ cackled Saurizin, shaking a mystifying arrangement of brass screws, rods and lenses at the sky like a geriatric warrior brandishing a sword in victory.
‘A palpable hit with the second discharge, Lord Bayaz!’ Denka could barely contain his delight. ‘One of th
e stones on the hill was struck directly and destroyed!’
The First of the Magi raised an eyebrow. ‘You talk as if destroying stones was the point of the exercise.’
‘I am sure considerable injury and confusion were inflicted upon the Northmen at the summit as well!’
‘Considerable injury and confusion!’ echoed Saurizin.
‘Fine things to visit upon an enemy,’ said Bayaz. ‘Continue.’
The mood of the two old Adepti sagged. Denka licked his lips. ‘It would be prudent to check the devices for evidence of damage. No one knows what the consequences of discharging them frequently might be…’
‘Then let us find out,’ said Bayaz. ‘Continue.’
The two old men clearly feared carrying on. But a great deal less than they fear the First of the Magi. They scraped their way back towards the tubes where they began to bully their helpless engineers as they themselves had been bullied. And the engineers no doubt will harangue the labourers, and the labourers will whip the mules, and the mules will kick at the dogs, and the dogs will snap at the wasps, and with any luck one of the wasps will sting Bayaz on his fat arse, and thus the righteous wheel of life will be ready to turn once again …
Away to the west a second attempt on the Old Bridge was just petering out, having achieved no more than the first. This time an ill-advised effort had been made to cross the river on rafts. A couple had broken up not long after pushing off, leaving their passengers floundering in the shallows or dragged under by their armour in deeper water. Others were swept off merrily downstream while the men on board flailed pointlessly with their paddles or their hands, arrows plopping around them.
‘Rafts,’ murmured Bayaz, sticking out his chin and scratching absently at his short beard.
‘Rafts,’ murmured Gorst, watching an officer on one furiously brandish his sword at the far bank, about as likely ever to reach it as he was the moon.
There was another thunderous explosion, followed almost immediately by a chorus of gasps, sighs and cheers of wonder from the swelling audience, gathered at the top of the rise in a curious crescent. This time Gorst scarcely flinched. Amazing how quickly the unbearable becomes banal. More smoke issued from the nearest tube, wandering gently up to join the acrid pall already hanging over the experiment.
That weird rumble rolled out again, smoke rising from somewhere across the river to the south. ‘What the hell are they up to?’ muttered Calder. Even standing on the wall, he couldn’t see a thing.
He’d been there all morning, waiting. Pacing up and down, in the drizzle, then the dry. Waiting, every minute an age, with his thoughts darting round and round like a lizard in a jar. Peering to the south and not being able to see a thing, the sounds of combat drifting across the fields in waves, sometimes sounding distant, sometimes worryingly near. But no call for help. Nothing but a few wounded carried past, scant reinforcement for Calder’s wavering nerve.
‘Here’s news,’ said Pale-as-Snow.
Calder stretched up, shading his eyes. It was White-Eye Hansul, riding up hard from the Old Bridge. He had a smile on his wrinkled face as he reined in, though, which gave Calder a trace of hope. Right then putting off the fighting seemed almost as good as not doing it at all.
He wedged a boot up on the gate in what he hoped was a manly style, trying to sound cool as snow while his heart was burning. ‘Scale got himself in a pickle, has he?’
‘It’s the Southerners pickled so far, the stupid bastards.’ White-Eye pulled his helmet off and wiped his forehead on the back of his sleeve. ‘Twice Scale’s driven them back. First time they came strolling across like they thought we’d just give the bridge over. Your brother soon cured them of that notion.’ He chuckled to himself and Pale-as-Snow joined him. Calder offered up his own, though it tasted somewhat sour. Everything did today.
‘Second time they tried rafts as well.’ White-Eye turned his head and spat into the barley. ‘Could’ve told them the current’s way too strong for that.’
‘Good thing they never asked you,’ said Pale-as-Snow.
‘That it is. I reckon you lot can sit back here and take your boots off. We’ll hold ’em all day at this rate.’
‘There’s a lot of day still,’ Calder muttered. Something flashed by. His first thought was that it was a bird skimming the barley, but it was too fast and too big. It bounced once in the fields, sending up a puff of stalk and dust and leaving a long scar through the crop. A couple of hundred strides to the east, down at the grassy foot of the Heroes, it hit Clail’s Wall.
Broken stones went spinning high, high into the air, showering out in a great cloud of dust and bits. Bits of tents. Bits of gear. Bits of men, Calder realised, because there were men camped behind the whole length of the wall.
‘By…’ said Hansul, gaping at the flying wreckage.
There was a sound like a whip cracking but a thousand times louder. White-Eye’s horse reared up and he went sliding off the back, tumbling down into the barley, arms flailing. All around men gawped and shouted, drew weapons or flung themselves on the ground.
That last looked a good idea.
‘Shit!’ hissed Calder, scrambling from the gate and throwing himself in a ditch, his desire to look manly greatly outweighed by his desire to stay alive. Earth and stones rattled down around them like unseasonal hail, pinging from armour, bouncing in the track.
‘Sticking to the sunny side,’ said Pale-as-Snow, utterly unmoved, ‘that’s Tenways’ stretch of wall.’
Bayaz’ servant lowered an eyeglass with a curl of mild disappointment to his mouth. ‘Wayward,’ he said.
A towering understatement. The devices had been discharged perhaps two dozen times and their ammunition, which appeared to be large balls of metal or stone, scattered variously across the slope of the hill ahead, the fields to each side, the orchard at the foot, the sky above and on one occasion straight into the river sending up an immense fountain of spray.
How much the cost of this little aside, so we could dig a few holes in the Northern landscape? How many hospitals could have been built with the money? How many alms-houses? Anything worthier? Burials for dead pauper children? Gorst struggled to care, but could not quite get there. We probably could have paid the Northmen to kill Black Dow themselves and go home. But then what would I find to fill the blasted desert between getting out of bed and…
There was an orange flash, and the vague perception of things flying. He thought he saw Bayaz’ servant punch at nothing beside his master, his arm an impossible blur. A moment later Gorst’s skull was set ringing by an explosion even more colossal than usual, accompanied by a note something like the tolling of a great bell. He felt the blast ripping at his hair, stumbled to keep his balance. The servant had a ragged chunk of curved metal the size of a dinner plate in his hand. He tossed it onto the ground where it smoked gently in the grass.
Bayaz raised his brows at it. ‘A malfunction.’
The servant rubbed black dirt from his fingers. ‘The path of progress is ever a crooked one.’
Pieces of metal had been flung in all directions. A particularly large one had bounced straight through a group of labourers leaving several dead and the rest spotted with blood. Other fragments had knocked little gaps in the stunned audience, or flicked over guardsmen like skittles. A great cloud of smoke was billowing from where one of the tubes had been. A blood and dirt-streaked engineer wandered out of it, his hair on fire, walking unsteadily at a diagonal. He didn’t have any arms, and soon toppled over.
‘Ever,’ as Bayaz sank unhappily into his folding chair, ‘a crooked one.’
Some people sat blinking. Others screamed. Yet more rushed about, trying to help the many wounded. Gorst wondered whether he should do the same. But what good could I do? Boost morale with jokes? Have you heard the one about the big idiot with the stupid voice whose life was ruined in Sipani?
Denka and Saurizin were sidling towards them, black robes smudged with soot. ‘And here, the penitents,’ murmured B
ayaz’ servant. ‘With your leave, I should attend to some of our business on the other side of the river. I have a feeling the Prophet’s little disciples are not idle over there.’
‘Then we cannot be idle either.’ The Magus waved his servant away with a careless hand. ‘There are more important things than pouring my tea.’
‘A very few.’ The servant gave Gorst a faint smile as he slipped away. ‘Truly, as the Kantic scriptures say, the righteous can afford no rest …’
‘Lord Bayaz, er …’ Denka looked across at Saurizin, who made a frantic get-on-with-it motion. ‘I regret to inform you that … one of the devices has exploded.’
The Magus let them stand for a moment while, out of sight, a woman shrieked like a boiling kettle. ‘Do you suppose I missed that?’
‘Another jumped from its carriage upon the last discharge, and I fear will take some considerable time to realign.’
‘The third,’ wheedled Denka, ‘is displaying a tiny crack which requires some attention. I am …’ his face crumpling up as though he feared someone was going to stick a sword in it, ‘reluctant to risk charging it again.’
‘Reluctant?’ Bayaz’ displeasure was as a mighty weight. Even standing beside him Gorst felt a powerful urge to kneel.
‘A defect in the casting of the metal,’ Saurizin managed to gasp, sending a poisonous glance at his colleague.
‘My alloys are perfect,’ whined Denka, ‘it was an inconsistency in the explosive powders that was to…’
‘Blame?’ The voice of the Magus was almost as fearsome as the explosion had been. Believe me, gentlemen, there is always plenty of that left over after a battle. Even on the winning side.’ The two old men positively grovelled. Then Bayaz waved a hand and the menace was gone. ‘But these things happen. Overall it has been … a most interesting demonstration.’
The Heroes Page 29
