This Forsaken Earth

by Paul Kearney

  “Here, the Destrir River, not much of an obstacle, but it runs right through the city and is bridged in three places before leaving the walls at East Culvert and heading north to join the Embrun. Here, the Palestrinan Gate, looking out to the west; here, the Forminon Gate, and the main barbican. Men call it the Warder. Bar Asfal has his main force opposite. Myconn stands within a sickle of high ground. To the west the Flamigrie Hills, to the south the Fornivan, to the east the Corbian. Only in the north is there an approach over clear terrain which can be used by heavy guns and wagons.” Canker paused a second, as though considering. “You would be unlikely to succeed in any attempt to infiltrate from the north.”

  “I’ll take to the rough ground,” Rol said quietly. “The east, for preference. I’ll enter the city there. What about the walls?”

  “Sixty feet high, and as thick at the base. They’ve been much battered by artillery, mind. You should have no problem finding a way over them. The main difficulty will be not getting yourself shot by our own people.”

  “What do I do when I get over the walls? Who shall I reveal myself to?”

  “The Bar Madivar Palace is here, plumb in the center of the city. Its walls overlook the river, and there’s a bridge on its northwest quarter which leads onto a vast open space, Barbion Square. When last I saw it, that’s where a great rabble of refugees had been allowed to throw up shacks and tents, but things may have changed. Rowen has taken up residence in the palace, in the North Wing, closest to the river and the bridge. Get in there, and her apartments are on the top floor of the complex, facing north.” Canker rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin. “The commander of the Palace Guard, mainstay of Myconn’s defense is—or was—Gideon Mirkady. He’s fanatically attached to Rowen—they’ve been lovers in the past. He will be the man to convince.”

  A flicker in Rol’s eyes, though his face was stone-still. “Convince?”

  “That you’re not a spy. His men are good, the best we have, and they’re sworn to protect her. That may make them more inclined to shoot first and do some thinking afterward.”

  “Excellent,” Rol said dryly.

  “Don’t worry, my lad; I won’t send you naked into that den of desperation. Here.” Canker held out his ruby-bright ring of office. It was heavy as Rol took it, warm from Canker’s flesh.

  “Show them that, and they should become fairly amenable.”

  “And Rowen. What do I tell her?”

  “I’m writing no dispatch; safer that way. You must give it to her verbally. Now, listen well.” Canker sounded off a series of points, folding back the outstretched fingers of a hand one by one as he did so. Rol took in the words and stored them safely away at the back of his mind, but mostly he was staring at the vellum map on the ground, and picturing Rowen in her palace, surrounded by her guards, governing a half-ruined city and a broken kingdom. She was the only reason for him to be here, but now that it had come to it, he was almost afraid at the thought of seeing her face again.

  It was snowing outside, fat silent flakes that were felt rather than seen in the darkness. They kissed Rol’s eyelashes as he stared up at the black sky, the invisible mountains, the moon and stars cloaked by cloud. He did not know where it was he called his home, but at that moment he had never felt farther from it.

  “Rol?”

  Standing there before him were Gallico, Creed, and Giffon, a mismatched trio of shapes whose presence abruptly warmed his heart.

  “Tonight, Elias. I go tonight.”

  “Then so do we all,” Gallico rumbled.

  “I go alone, Gallico. This calls for stealth.”

  “This calls for someone to watch your back, my friend. We’ve come this far; we’re not about to bugger off now. Besides, it’s black as a witch’s tit tonight. As long as we keep it quiet, we could troop in there by the hundred.”

  It was not a good idea; but then, nothing had seemed like a good idea in weeks. “All right, then, but we’ll have to be fast on our feet to begin with. Myconn is still five miles away, and I’m taking no horses. We’ll run it.”

  Five miles. There were six hours until midnight, and another seven hours of darkness after that, so they had a fair amount of time to play with, but none to waste. They set off at a steady jog, quickly leaving behind the prone lines of Canker’s army and striking east, then south. There were no stars to navigate by, but Gallico had what seemed to be an internal compass, and his huge taloned paw touched Rol on the left or right shoulder as they jogged along, keeping them on course. After the first mile they were up over the bulk of the ridge, and Myconn came into view in the distance, a carpet of lights across the hills, extending for miles across the lightless face of the earth. But it was surrounded by a line of more lights, a thin string of them leagues long, punctuated by more concentrated clumps here and there, and rivaled in one place by a great concentration: the camps of the enemy, and the siege-lines they maintained.

  “Left,” Rol panted, and they struck off eastward once more.

  Up into the broken gullies and scree slopes of the Corbian Hills, stones sliding under the snow as they set their feet upon them, the all-pervading cold sinking into their bones as their pace slowed on the treacherous ground. A wind picked up from the mountains, and blew snow in powdered clouds across the hills. They took a wide dogleg east, and then south, and then west to try and avoid the siege-lines, but they were close enough all the same for Rol’s vision to pick out the black zigzagged furrows of trenches notched in the snow, and the sprawling tent-lines a quarter-mile in their rear. Campfires burned amid the tents, guttering motes of light struggling against the wind, but the trenches looked entirely empty—until one looked long enough, and glimpsed the shadows patroling up and down.

  “Most of them are in their tents tonight,” he whispered to Gallico as the pair lay in the blowing snow on their bellies, peering west.

  “Sensible chaps,” the halftroll muttered. “You know, Rol, if we could make it across those trenches here, we’d cut out a great loop of bad ground. I don’t know about you, but I don’t much fancy stumbling through these damn hills all night.”

  Rol looked quickly at his companion. Gallico’s face seemed shrunken, and his eyes had retreated into his head.

  “You’re not right yet, Gallico.”

  “It’s the damn cold. Gets into my chest and gurgles there like a spit-filled pipe.”

  Rol considered. His feet were numb in his boots and the snow felt fine as sand as it blew into the back of his neck.

  “All right. To hell with it, we’ll cross their trenches. We could be half the night finding a way through the hills. Let’s get back to the others.”

  Creed and Giffon were huddled together like dogs, curled up against the wind. The boy still had his bag of surgical tools over his shoulder, and he gripped a heavy catling in one half-frozen fist.

  “We’re going through their lines,” Rol told them, and they seemed both alarmed and relieved.

  Fleam warmed his hand as he drew her. They approached the loyalist lines in single file, Rol out ahead, Gallico bringing up the rear. For Rol, the dark of the night did not exist; he saw no color, but every detail was plain and sharp, a monochrome world bright amid the blowing snow.

  He padded up to the lip of the trench with no more noise than a stalking cat. It was neck-deep, lined with Hessian sandbags and wooden duckboards in the bottom that glistened with frost.

  The first sentry died quietly, the scimitar entering the side of his neck and reappearing black and steaming out of his windpipe. He sagged, and Rol caught him in his arms, lowered him to the ground with great gentleness. Fleam slid free, the hot blood still smoking off her steel. Setting her down, Rol rolled the corpse into a corner of deeper shadow in the bottom of the trench. All quiet. He waved at Gallico, and the halftroll brought Creed and Giffon forward, their eyes wide as owls’ as they tried to pierce a night that to them was black as cold pitch.

  “Up over the side,” Rol hissed. “There’s another line about fifty y
ards ahead. This is just a reserve trench. Quickly now.”

  Giffon stumbled, and Gallico caught him by the nape, actually lifting him free of the ground for a moment. The halftroll’s breath was sawing in his throat. “Take your time, lad. We’ve all bloody night, after all.”

  They felt horribly exposed as they dashed across the white, open ground between the two trenches, though in reality the starless night and blowing shroud of ice covered them from all but the most alert of watchers.

  The second sentry turned around to see a bright-eyed shadow rushing at him. He had time to raise an instinctive arm before Fleam’s glittering edge came down. The arm came off at the elbow-joint and the preternatural blade swept on, into the man’s rib cage. Not so clean this time. He choked and twisted and thrashed his way to death, while Rol stood on top of him, crushing out what breath remained in his lacerated lungs. A hard death. Rol closed the man’s eyes; for some reason he did not like the way they looked at him.

  The four of them were now lining part of the forward trench. Before them were three cables at least of open ground, much shattered by shell-fire. Beyond that, the walls of Myconn loomed up black and forbidding.

  “Two runs,” Rol said, breathing evenly. “Halfway across we stop, listen, then go on again. Gallico, look after Giffon. Elias, you stay with me, and try not to fall on your arse.”

  “Lend me your eyes and I’ll promise not to,” Creed said tartly. Rol grinned in the darkness.

  “Wind’s dropping,” Gallico said, raising his head. “Best make it quick.”

  “You first, then—and don’t look back.”

  They swarmed up over the lip of the trench, Giffon dragged like a doll when he stumbled. The halftroll picked the boy up bodily and slung him under one arm. He was not so swift as he once had been, but still astonishingly fast on his feet. The pair of them disappeared two hundred yards ahead as Gallico dived into a shell-hole.

  “Don’t you be trying to stick me under your bloody arm,” Creed murmured.

  “Then keep up, Elias.” Voices down the trench, and a flag of torchlight that seemed bright as a cannon-blast in Rol’s night vision.

  “Go, Elias. Go on ahead.”

  The dark man scrambled up over the trench and took off into the darkness. Fleam trembled in Rol’s fist. He swore silently, and followed in Creed’s wake, walking. A squad of men was coming up the trench.

  Snow crunched under his feet. He saw Creed slip and fall, and immediately regain his feet and stumble on. Behind him, there was an outcry. The enemy had found their murdered comrade. Rol began to run.

  Gallico had found a shell-hole to crouch in, a crater half a yard deep and five times as wide. The halftroll’s eyes glinted green and luminous in the dark. Giffon looked both terrified and excited.

  “Up, lads. No time to hang about.”

  The four of them charged onward toward Myconn’s great walls. Behind them someone blew on a horn, and more lights were kindled in the loyalist lines. The crack of an arquebus, followed by a ragged volley fired in hopeful rage into the darkness.

  Their ragged sprint was brought to a halt by towering buttresses of stone. They had reached the walls. Creed slapped the icy masonry with the palm of one hand. “Excellent. Now what?”

  “Give me a leg up, Gallico.”

  Gallico gripped Rol’s thighs and lifted him clear of the ground. Sheathing Fleam, Rol let his hands run across the stone, feeling for cracks and handholds. Everything was covered in ice; his fingers probed at it in vain. More gunfire from the trenches behind them, and now someone was beating frenziedly on an alarm triangle atop the walls themselves.

  “Let me down.”

  He hit the ground hard. Gallico was bent over, fighting for breath and spitting dark liquid into the snow. A spent bullet snapped into the wall above their heads and sprayed them with glass-hard ice.

  “No good; a fucking spider couldn’t get up there. We’ll head left, look for a better place.”

  Gallico shoved aside Creed’s helping hand, and the foursome pelted along the base of the walls, panting hard. Broken masonry here; Giffon tripped and went headlong with a sharp cry. Rol picked him up, heart hammering, cursing Canker’s insouciance and his own overconfidence.

  “Here,” Creed spat. He was a little ahead. “Broken blocks all over the place. Looks like a breach, or something similar.”

  “Keep your yapping down,” Gallico growled. They clustered about Creed, stubbing their toes on shards of shattered stone. There was a stripe of blood below Giffon’s nose, and the boy breathed as though he had a heavy cold.

  Yes, the rampart was battered here, the outer courses of masonry blasted away so that the old brick of the wall interior was exposed. Slick, perilous, but a way up nonetheless.

  “I’ll go first. Gallico at the rear. It’s sixty feet, remember. Take your time.”

  Heavy exchanges of fire were cracking along the top of the walls and out of the trenches behind them. A startling boom as someone let loose with a heavy gun, an eighteen-pounder by the sound of it.

  “Looks like we woke up the neighbors,” Gallico observed, wiping Giffon’s bloody nose like a patient mother.

  Rol jabbed his numb toes at the broken brickwork and felt frantically for handholds. There was no shortage of them, but all were slimy with ice. His breath steamed in a wet cloud in front of his face. He gained two fathoms, three, then halted, foiled by the slipperiness of the wall.

  “Go left after three fathoms,” he whispered to Creed over his shoulder, and began edging sideways along a tiny ledge that gave purchase to the toes of his boots. It was easier here. He went up again, the wall leaning in from vertical under him, like a steep set of tiny stairs. Then there was a huge block of outer-facing stone which he had to haul himself over. He looked down and saw Creed’s face, teeth bared.

  “Take my hand, Elias.”

  “I can’t see my own bloody hand, let alone yours.”

  He tapped the convict on the head, and at once Creed’s chill fingers grasped his own. He pulled Elias up onto the wide block that supported him and they sat a second or two, puffing.

  “Gallico?” Rol hissed.

  “Keep going, you damn fools,” the halftroll said. “I’ve Giffon on my back. It’s all right; claws are better than fingers.”

  Volleys of arquebus-fire were now tearing out from the parapet above their heads, and the heavy wall-guns were barking. A smell of powder-smoke eddying in the failing breeze, but at least the damn snow had stopped blowing in their teeth.

  “We pop up in front of yonder fellows, and we’re likely to get shot,” Creed said, jerking his head toward the top of the wall.

  “I know.” There was torchlight up there now, men shouting. The walls of Myconn had come to irascible life, and were spitting fire and lead out into the dark.

  “I’ll give it a go, all the same. We can’t cling here like house-martins all night.”

  “Don’t get your head shot off,” Creed said.

  “You have a talent for the stating of the obvious, Elias.”

  He began climbing again. It was easier here, and the rubble of the walls leaned farther inward. It took only a few minutes to get his head below the parapet itself, or where the parapet should have been. This section of wall had been badly smashed up by artillery fire. He drew in a slow lungful of air, wondering a little at the strange turns his life had taken of late. Then with one fluid twist of his arms and torso, he was standing atop the wall itself.

  A terrified soldier fired his arquebus from the hip, squawking with fear. The bullet plucked at Rol’s side. Enraged, Rol whipped forward, a mere blur of shadow, and knocked the unlucky man clear off his feet. “Hold your fire, you damned fool! I’m a friend.”

  A massed crowd of other armed men was pouring down the wall with firearms in their fists. Rol swallowed his rage, and lifted his arms in the air, palms out. “Hold your fire! Messenger from Canker, the chancellor!”

  Some other idiot discharged his weapon. The torchlight comin
g forward ruined Rol’s night vision. The crowd of men paused; two dozen at least stood there with poised weapons, that wide-eyed flight-or-fight look on their faces. Rol glared at them. “I’m a friendly, on your side. I come from Canker. I came through the enemy lines.”

  An officer shouldered his way through the press in livery of black and scarlet. “Name and rank!” he snapped crisply. He bore a heavy rapier, and held a cocked pistol whose muzzle seemed black and enormous as it looked Rol in the eye.

  “Rol Cortishane. Canker is here with a relieving army, just over the ridge. I have information for—for the Queen. There are three companions with me, still climbing up the wall below.”

  “Oh, indeed? Now, there’s a novel way to make an entrance. Throw down your sword.”

  Rol stiffened. His arms drooped, and as they did a dozen firearms were raised higher.

  “You have my word; I am what I say.”

  “I’ll take your word, and your sword too. And tell these fellow wallflowers of yours to get up here or we’ll shoot them off our defenses. Quickly!”

  Rol raised an eyebrow. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken to him with that tone. He tugged Fleam out of her scabbard and tossed her at the officer’s feet, then slowly leaned over and shouted into the darkness below.

  “Elias, Gallico, Giffon! Get up here.”

  When he straightened again the officer was only one pace away. The man had a small, tight smile on his face. He smashed the butt of his pistol into Rol’s temple, and in the bright, bitter light of the blow, Rol had not even an instant to curse his own ineptitude.

  Thirteen

  THE QUEEN OF BIONAR

  “FISHEYE,” SHE SAID, AND SMILED. IT WAS NOT THE SMILE he had loved, like a gift of secret grace. It was something else, something new she had learned in the years since last they had met.