All of her father’s veterans had pushed for the night attack. It was risky, almost crazy, but it was the only way to really protect Roalas. They could not just stand back and let the city rot while its enemies made their siege engines and tightened the perimeter even more.
Terry’s wound made him a cripple. But his mind was sharp. “Your Highness?”
“Yes, Sergeant, speak,” she said, anxious to hear his thoughts.
“Do not let the pain choke you,” he mumbled, almost intimately, hobbling by, the clack of his cane rising above the thrum and groan of wood and bowstrings, the rush of fire and the roar of a thousand sore throats. “You’re doing a good thing.”
“People are dying,” she said and hated herself for that. She sounded childish and petty.
“For every one that lives, three will die today, and trust me, they will die. However, you will get battle-hardened men worth ten times their number. Your dear father, praised be his memory, knew this lesson. When he sent us to fight, we knew we would be dying for something grand and noble. And it wasn’t speeches, Your Highness, or empty promises. It was one simple thing, our brothers-in-arms.”
“Let’s try this one,” Reese said loudly. Groaning, soldiers loaded a hide-wrapped bundle onto one of the Fuckers. The engineer hovered above them, inspecting the load. Something black and sticky dripped from the seams of the bundle.
Amalia looked at the old soldier again. He was just one step away. He saw her frightened and confused and weak, but he did not judge her. His eyes were clear, his face relaxed. All he saw was Adam’s blood, and that was good enough for him.
I must be like Father, she promised. Just and hard and fearless.
“There’s your perfect killer right there,” Terry continued, pointing at one of the soldiers. “That man. See the fervor in his eyes? That man doesn’t fear death. You want that man promoted after the battle and given a squad command. You want the best killers for your leaders. This is where you weed out cowards and fools and forge heroes. And see that lad there? He’s pissed himself wet.”
With morbid fascination, Amalia let her worries slip away and focused on the intense scene around her. No one faced real danger up here, and still, she could see those who cherished combat and those who merely did their duty. They all loved their empress and their city and wanted to protect their families, but some had a natural streak about them. Others just silently cursed their bad luck.
“Come the morning, these men lose their virginity. Pardon my words, Your Highness.”
Men came and went, a blur of reports and curses and heated arguments. Edwin was shouting. Reese was fretting over his machines like a man possessed. Grizzled and crippled soldiers from her father’s time stood everywhere, watching, guiding, sifting through the ranks of her green, inexperienced troops. Eighteen years of peace made for eighteen years of dust and neglect. And now, they washed it away in blood.
Apart from her mother, no other city dignitary had come onto the walls this night. It was a message.
Lord Mayor Benedict was cross with her. The guild heads and city merchants had stayed indoors, a statement of a deepening rift as much as one of fear. They all wanted peace, or at least a truce, and they hated her stubborn choices.
Amalia could easily label them traitors, but she stayed her hand. They were loyal citizens, worried citizens. They had families and assets, and if the Parusites breached the walls and conquered Roalas, they would lose everything. Amalia desperately wanted them to understand that fighting was the only option, but the more she argued her point, the more they disagreed. They never disrespected Father, she thought sadly. They never dared.
She had considered bringing some of her hostages to see the battle and witness her daring. But Luke had quickly persuaded her against it. He worried they would see and hear too much, and he could not risk it. They would know the city’s defenses, the strength of the men, the tactics. A word could slip away for coin, a favor, or revenge. The Eracian and Caytorean nobles had no reason to wish her any good fortune in this war.
The Fucker fired its special load. Reese raised his arms high, cheering the projectile. It didn’t seem to burn in flight, but when it hit the ground, it ignited, bright white. The engineer cackled once.
A few moments later, Amalia saw her chief adviser step out of the narrow gate of a nearby tower, huffing, winded. He walked toward her slowly, catching his breath as a storm of soldiers ran past him, nudging him, pushing him. His face looked harried. This was not the first siege he had lived through; only the last time, severed heads had rained into the city.
“Amalia,” he groaned, winded. “It’s a long climb, but I had to see you.”
Amalia felt a knot tighten in her belly. “What is it now?”
Theodore leaned on a merlon. “Good news,” he said, calming her. “One of Luke’s men has delivered a message just now. The spy successfully evaded the enemy lines and is now riding to Somar with your proposal.” Like her, he was weary. They had all slept little lately.
Amalia sighed with relief. Her mother squeezed her hand gently, encouragingly. “It is done,” the older woman said. There was nothing else she could do now but wait for the Eracians to respond.
Theodore sat on a barrel. One of the soldiers gave him a flask of wine. The man frowned, but then swilled like the rest of them. In the yard below, children were loading buckets with severed heads and ferrying them onto the battlements. A fat man with no shirt on his thick, greasy torso was hacking through the corpses with a big leaf saw, oblivious of the cold. Children ran, eager and fearless. For them, it was just a game.
The noise intensified. Soon, it was a solid wall of pain and terror. A hundred horns exploded into the night, all over the dark fields. The Parusites were scrambling to the defense. The clangor was deafening. Soldiers had to shout to be heard. Amalia huddled by her mother, watching the battle unravel. Gerald was out there, too, fighting. She could do nothing but wait.
In the city, the lamps burned behind tiny windows. Like her, thousands of mothers, wives, and daughters stood a silent, heart-wrenching vigil, waiting for news of the fight. Every one of the men was a beloved son or husband. The streets were empty of souls, except for an occasional watchman doing his routine patrol. No one wanted to be out there right now. The catapults fired again. Flaming shots flew far, far away.
Amalia rubbed the side of her head, traced a finger under her wig, and touched her ruined ear. Few people knew about her scars. And the rest must not know. It was bad for morale. Her fingers shivered as she recalled that day, the moment of confusion, the hot flare of pain, the apple tossed at her. Only it was not an apple now, it was a knife dipped in poison. And then, she was lying on the ground, hot drops of blood searing her eyes and nose and mouth. She shook her head, banishing these thoughts. No, she had to be strong and unyielding, like Father.
Chief Healer Radburne recommended she continued drinking calming potions, but she refused. They fuddled her head and weakened her. She used the cleansing poultices, and the wound was healing cleanly, white and flat, but she would not drink herself into insensibility. She would not be cowed into fear.
But she was afraid.
“Fuck them in their asses!” A catapult crewman whooped, clapping loudly as his load flew farthest of all, then remembered his audience and threw a quick fleeting glance at the empress. “I apologize, Your Highness.” Reese smacked him on the nape.
The chaos went on and on, unending. Hours stretched, became an eternity. The eastern horizon blushed with predawn pink. Still the men fought. Fires raged in the murky fields, snakes of red and orange and yellow. The portcullis groaned as it was raised once again and the survivors from the southern camp limped back, so very few of them. Behind them, less than a hundred paces away, a wedge of Parusite infantry followed, marching fast and closing.
“Get the archers here, all of them, now!” Edwin howled.
Amalia had to step back to let two men take position at the crenelations, cranking their crossbows. They
paid her no mind, and she was glad for the silent moment of privacy. Cursing obscenities, they fired into the sea of enemy soldiers. A thousand men all around did the same. People started hurling rocks, anything they could throw to stall the enemy.
Edwin was yammering orders to a lanky runner, the boy nodding fervently. “Go!” the lieutenant shouted, clapping the boy on the shoulder.
The messenger spun and sprinted away toward the narrow flight of steps leading down to the gatehouse. But then he skidded and fell hard on the stairs, tumbling down. Several men rushed to help him. The boy limped up and screamed when he leaned on his broken ankle.
Edwin cursed. “Oh, damn it. Get me a new runner, now!”
Light crept onto the battlefield, and the gray soup slowly coalesced into bobbing shapes. They looked like worms, but soon transformed into men, tiny things with metal helms and long spears, killing each other. The Parusite wave crashed into the no-man’s-land, spreading a hundred fingers. Determined defenders, city guards in uniforms, and prowlers alike rushed to meet them. The large, coordinated surge became a hundred pockets of cruel hand-to-hand combat. Very soon, it ebbed, the tide of the enemy forces receding. They could not bring their superior power to bear, not while the huge swath of rubble and traps stood in their way. Slowly, the tail of the southern attack curled back into the city, cheered by the people on the walls.
“The gate is secure, sir,” another man reported shortly thereafter, climbing onto the battlements three steps at a time. He was wearing only a light tunic and had no weapons, so he could run faster. “We pushed them bastards back.”
“The north camp?” Lieutenant Edwin asked.
“No word yet, sir,” the man offered quietly.
Amalia bit her lip and waited.
The fighting abated. A black swath of bodies marked the major clashes, piled unceremoniously around the burning remains of the large siege towers and onagers. A hundred smaller fires raged in the Parusite camp. Men and horses were running around wildly. She desperately wanted to go to the other side of the city and wait for Gerald’s return, but she could not do that. She had to be here, where the major force was engaged, even if it were just a diversion. Gerald’s men were on their own now, deep behind enemy lines.
The morning came, and a drizzle started. The southern camp was quiet now, save for the crackle of fires and the uniform wail of suffering that hung above the battlefield. The enemy was still in a frenzy, but they were licking their wounds now and paid the defenders no more heed. Another messenger came.
“They’re coming back,” he said simply.
“I want to go,” Amalia whispered, but her mother caught her arm, stopping her.
“No, dear, let them be. You have no place among them. You’re not a warrior.”
Edwin donned his helm, flicked a quick salute at the empress, and walked away. They would ride outside the walls and escort the survivors back.
Amalia’s steps felt wooden as she left the walls and headed for the palace. Her eyes saw everything, but her mind did not register any of it. She felt empty, hollow. Did we win? she wondered stupidly. She was tired.
Rain turned her wig into a damp rag. She tore if off, despite protests from her bodyguards. Lisa said nothing. She just walked by her daughter, watching her. They stepped into a carriage, dripping water on the floor. Amalia leaned back and closed her eyes.
“Take me to the North Gate,” she whispered.
“We must not, dear,” Lisa warned.
“Now,” Amalia hissed.
The carriage lurched as the driver changed direction. The ride was a short one through the deserted streets, but it felt like an eternity. Amalia stepped out as the last of the survivors of the north battle limped into the castle. One of her bodyguards plopped her wig back on her head. Amalia hardly noticed.
So few, she noted. Where’s Gerald?
No one paid her any attention. Men looked like ghosts. They were all covered in blood and soot and were virtually unrecognizable from one another. Amalia watched the procession, wondering if there was anything she could do or say. But what could they possibly want to hear from their empress after a night of butchering? What would a few gallant words mean to people who had just seen all their comrades die? And for what? So they could bring back a traitor’s head?
But it had to be done. It had to. Her father would never have let traitors live.
Still no sign of Gerald. The rain was a torrent now. Men and women raised their heads high and let the cold drops wash gore from their faces. No one spoke. Even the wounded were too tired to cry.
Soldiers from the city offered soup and bread and wine to the survivors. They ate and drank carefully, as if seeing food for the first time. Then, stretchers were brought. One by one, they lay down and were carried to hospitals. Everyone was wounded. She could not see Gerald.
The procession of stretchers was not long, less than fifty. Still, she couldn’t see him anywhere.
“Anyone else out there?” Edwin called through the open gates.
A mounted soldier was scanning the rubble. “Don’t see no one else!”
The lieutenant waved the man back into the city. “We close the gates.”
Where’s Gerald? You can’t leave him out there, she wanted to say. But she kept her face cool and stern and regal. Empresses did not weep.
“Dear, there’s nothing else for you to see here,” Lisa pleaded.
“But Gerald…” she moaned. She remembered the harsh words. She had called him a fool.
“He volunteered,” her mother said quietly.
Amalia closed her eyes. In a moment of heart-wrenching sorrow, a weird, selfish thought rose from the depths of her soul. She remembered she did not like Lieutenant Edwin very much. And now, it seemed, he would become the commander of the City Guard.
CHAPTER 33
Five days after her rescue, Doris tried to kill herself. She lied about going to relieve herself. Ewan was no wise man, but he had lived among the hard, tight-lipped dockworkers long enough to pick up the subtle signals of distress and despair. When the councillor jumped into the freezing waters of a nearby river, he was ready.
He had dragged her unprotesting body from the icy shallows and built a fire, then massaged warmth back into her blue skin as she just lay there, eyes half lidded, her expression one of apathy and shock. Constance watched him carefully as he stripped the filthy wet dress from the woman’s body and kneaded her pale, cold flesh with his ever-warm fingers, trying to bring heat back into her. Doris was not an ugly woman, by far, and he was acutely aware of her supple curves, even as he gallantly fought for her life.
The next morning, she pretended as if nothing had happened. But then, by midday, she was crying, sobbing against his shoulder, whispering her story.
When the pirates had stormed Monard, the first to flee had been her husband’s private army, a cowardly lot of men paid to protect her family. Left without armed guards, the people of the city had tried their best to fend off the Oth Danesh, but they only managed to invoke their fury and get themselves killed. Robert, her husband, had died fighting at the doorstep of their manor house, with an elderly servant and a merchant’s apprentice at his side. Doris had watched him die and then done the one thing that any sensible person would have.
She had chosen life.
She had hidden in a cellar while the pirates rampaged through the house, looting, burning. They had taken away her two baby daughters as slaves. Like a coward, she had crawled under a crate and let their screams dwindle. For days, she had stayed there, eating beetroot and drinking expensive wine and sleeping with a cork hammer in her hands, weeping, cursing her choice.
She had survived.
And then she had fled, leaving behind the ruins of her burned home, leaving the corpse of her husband to the flies and rats. She could have stayed and fought, she should have died at his side, she said, but her body would not obey. The urgency to live racked her almost like fever. The only thing she could remember was her hunger for life,
her hunger to survive this attack. And the cold realization that she had cursed her soul forever. She had forsaken her babies. She had abandoned them. She had done one thing mothers never did. Not in the vilest of tales.
A week later, she had been captured by the Oth Danesh on the outskirts of the city, where they waited for those who had eluded them just days before and thought themselves safe now.
If not for Ewan, she said, she would have been caged aboard one of their galleys, sailing back to their foreign land. But now that the danger had passed, she couldn’t bear the pain. She wanted to die. She just wanted the suffering to go away.
Ewan could not begin to comprehend the enormity of her loss. What did it feel like to lose your family? What did it feel like to lose your children? He remembered the Feoran attack on his monastery, the day his world shattered. The sense of confusion and terror had been overwhelming, but deep down, he had had Lar to nourish him and guide him. This woman did not even have the consolation of faith, just the stark truth.
What did it feel like to consciously decide you loved yourself more than your own children?
Ewan could only imagine her torment. But he knew the pain was not the worst part. It was the helplessness, the cold white knowledge you couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. Well, she could have. She could have chosen slavery or death. None of those would have saved her family.
“You’re not a coward.” Ewan tried to soothe her, the burden of the entire world weighing on his shoulders. An empty, hollow feeling churned in his stomach, and it had nothing to do with the gods. “Fleeing was the sane thing to do. You can fight now.”
She nodded weakly. Raw survival instincts made you stay alive. They did not make you feel good about it. “I will get my daughters back,” she whispered.
“And I will help you,” he promised. What else could he do?
More days passed. The confession did help a bit. Each day, her pain lessened and her resolve grew, tapering into white-hot rage. Doris never quite forgot the selfish choice she had made, but she vowed to find her daughters and avenge them. Ewan realized it was probably the one way she could cope with her life now. He would help her.
The Broken (The Lost Words: Volume 2) Page 38
