by Jon Kiln
“What did you do with other half?” Suriyen asked with a wry smile.
“Had to bribe them.” The second in command rolled his eyes. “Who would have thought a bunch of lamp-lighters and torch-shapers are such an unpatriotic bunch? I’d have a word with your mate the Councilor if I were you.” He shrugged as if it made no difference now.
I guess it doesn’t, Suriyen agreed to herself. It’ll either work or it won’t, and the city might fall anyway.
“Of course,” Ruyiman said a little warily, “you know that, uh, that if we pull this off…”
“That we might be kissing goodbye to our last chance of defending the city?” Suriyen asked heavily. “That we might be dooming the city, and that I’ll be going down in history as the one person who lost Fuldoon, the city whose walls have never fallen?”
Ruyiman grimaced, scratched his beard and then said, “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Oh, well I think you can chalk that down to yes, I have thought about it. Now get the teams ready,” Suriyen said, walking past her second and to the first of the wicker cages that they had erected as makeshift lifts up and down the walls.
“Aye-aye, Cap’n.” Ruyiman waved a hand towards some of his own aides and lieutenants as he clambered in the wicker basket beside her, and tugged on the bell rope to signal the pulley team that they were ascending.
As they moved above the city, Suriyen began to see just how much had been destroyed by the masonry blocks thrown by the Menaali siege towers, and the occasional volleys of arrows that the besieging army had managed to get over the wall.
Surprisingly not as much as I expected, Suriyen thought, seeing the deep scores in the streets and markets were confined to those nearest the walls. No fires had spread past their original streets, and the vast acres and lengths of the city proper, all the way up to the Council Building itself, was mostly intact.
“These streets will be good to defend,” Ruyiman said at her side, indicating how there was no organizing principle behind the streets of Fuldoon, making it easy for small groups of skirmishers to attack and counter-attack, to run and hide.
“Maybe, but believe me, you don’t want to let those Menaali past the walls and into the city,” Suriyen said, her mind starting to slide back to the time when she had been a lot younger and seen the same horde swarm over different villages.
“You run. You don’t carry anything that won’t save your life, and you run and you keep on running until the world is between you and them,” Suriyen was saying.
“What did you say?” Ruyiman was looking at her oddly.
“Oh. Just something someone told a little girl a long time ago. It’s what we might have to tell the few hundred thousand people who live here if the Menaali get beyond those walls and into the city.” When Suriyen looked at Fuldoon she didn’t see it in the same strategic way that Ruyiman did, even though he had lived here half of his adult life.
The northerly ‘top’ of the city was all ports, harbors, and docks. All of it, stretching along the horizon were a forest of masts and piers stabbing out into the Great Inner Sea. Behind them as they rose up the wall, the western side of the city was all wall, a curving line that stretched from the mouth of the river to the north along its banks all the way south, before diminishing to a curve somewhere as she knew that it curled around the unseen southern edge of the city, leaving the mighty river to meander on the edge of the Sand Seas.
Suriyen wasn’t worried about the Menaali taking the southern edge of the city. A horde of their size would have to travel for days, leaving their flanks exposed and still have to construct bridges wide enough and strong enough to cross the river. Up here in the north, with its bridge built across the sunk platforms of entire boats was the easiest options for Dal Grehb and his siege towers almost as high as the walls themselves.
And all the rest… Suriyen looked from the northern ports to the edge of the east ahead of her, and the south to her right. All people. All homes and lives and people who will either be rounded up and butchered, or played with by the feasting warriors before being sold on as slaves.
“And what happened to that little girl who ran?” Ruyiman was asking as the wicker basket thumped to the top, and one of the lightweight doors were thrown open.
“She didn’t run fast enough and Dal Grehb caught up with her,” Suriyen said. “And she swore an oath that she would spend her life if need be trying to make sure no one else had to run, or be afraid.”
It had been the same oath that had drawn her to the religion of Friends. The religion that stated that all the people of the world were like a herd or a flock, and that they traveled through the wheel of time, being preyed upon by monsters and predators. Wolves, snakes, scorpions, diseases, devils and spirits and men like Dal Grehb. Monsters. Monsters who need to be destroyed.
“Well, I hope that little girl gets to fulfill her oath, for all of our sakes,” Ruyiman said quietly as they stepped up to the walls.
“So do I,” Suriyen breathed, looking down at the might of the Menaali horde on the far side of the walls. They numbered in their tens of thousands, she estimated. Warriors from disparate clans who were more used to riding over the grasslands of the north but who had crossed the deserts. They appeared like a dark stain across the world, stretching from the far side of the river out to almost fill the horizon.
Tall shapes like walking mountains stood accusing on the river’s far back. Siege towers that were taller than most towers of the city beyond, but still not quite as tall as the walls of Fuldoon.
Below her feet, the dark tide of the army attacking them had retreated momentarily, and had revealed the bloodied and stained decks of the boat-bridge: wide, double-lanes of wood and stone stretching across the river, moored by six boats, their pointed prows still sticking out visibly above the water. The bridge itself looked slick with blood and gore, but the Menaali had been kind enough to at least carry their dead back to their side of the shore, leaving Fuldoon’s few who had fallen over the sides. From where Suriyen stood she could even see the signs of industry from the Menaali encampments. They had seized and occupied the cattle-market trading post town on the far side of the river, and from it had butchered every building for its stone to use as projectiles.
Somewhere in that mass sits Dal Grehb, atop a horde of trophies and stolen riches already gleaned from his conquests.
There were also other disturbing signs, with entire fields given over to the pyres of the dead Menaali. If we did, by miracle win, I would force the Menaali to disinter every one of their rotting dead and carry them back to their accursed homes with them! Suriyen swore, knowing that she was feeling frustrated and useless to make such an empty threat.
But what shook the woman more wasn’t just the large number of warriors. No, what shook her were the signs of civility from the Menaali. The large numbers of tents, huts, cook fires, and rising smoke from their hastily constructed workshops. The Menaali were so vast as to be a moving town all by themselves. Past the shouts and chants of thousands of voices, sometimes the captain could even hear the lilt of foreign voices raised in song, women’s voices, or babies crying.
They’re not going anywhere easily. Suriyen gritted her teeth as Ruyiman cursed at the sight.
“By the sun that burns. Why’d they have to pull back now?” he asked. “Just when we have your crazy counter-attack planned.”
Suriyen shrugged like it was no matter. “They’ll come back.”
“How do you want to do this?” Ruyiman scratched at his beard as though he was still unsure if it was a good idea.
“Wait until they cross the bridge,” Suriyen said heavily, blinking her eyes against the glare of the sun. “Then let them have it.”
“And, the last time that I will ask, you are sure you want to do this?” Ruyiman said steadily. He had the look of a man who had seen others do terrible things, and knew exactly what the cost would be.
“Yes. Bring up the pots, and set your teams at the walls above the gates.” Suriyen wa
s glad that Talon wouldn’t be here to see what would come next.
4
The man didn’t look particularly evil, the woman thought as she regarded the soldier who stood in the middle of her tent in chains. He was thin for a Menaali warrior, with a head that looked almost too small for his body. Quick eyes, but hardly any muscle on him to warrant the ability to pick up a sword.
“How many sins could this one have performed?” Aisa Desai muttered to herself as she turned from the small gap in the tent that she had been using to view her prisoner, and back to the Menaali guard who had brought him to her.
Aisa Desai was unusual amongst the Menaali. Not for being a woman, as there were many women fighters as well as women attendants to Dal Grehb’s horde, but for the fact that she wasn’t a Menaali nor a slave. She was from, in fact, the ancient city of the gods itself, and her dark skin attested to the fact of her heritage. She regarded the hulking Menaali soldier who towered over her coolly, with the sort of disdain born from a lifetime regarding ones’ home as the center of the entire cosmos. Aisa Desai wore her hair in braids, gathered above her head in a high topknot, and her eyes were heavy and lidded as she made the guard look away in fear.
“I swear it, Desai,” the guard said. “He’s a soldier, same as me, so he’s killed his share. I’ve seen him take women after the battlefield, and I’ve seen him take the gold from the bodies of the fallen. He’s as evil as any in this army.”
Aisa huffed. “Well, we had better hope so, otherwise I might have to just use you instead.”
“If it pleases the Desai…” the guard said hurriedly, bowing his head and causing the older woman in front of him to laugh. These Menaali were so superstitious. She had a few tricks up her sleeve, of course—what sorceress worth their salt didn’t? But she couldn’t condemn a soul to hell by will alone. No, she thought, that is entirely what people have to choose for themselves.
She swept into her tent, boots slipping from grit and dirt to thick carpets in an instant, and the welcoming scent of her burner’s heavy incense greeting her masked the battle outside. It didn’t quite mask the acrid tang of the chained man’s fear, however, as he turned and almost yelped in panic as he saw who had him captive. The closest confidant to Dal Grehb himself, and supposedly the person who had masterminded the entire sacking of the oldest city in the world.
“De-Desai. My lady, I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but you have the wrong man, I swear it!” He gasped, trying to turn but unable to as the chains held him fast to the heavy wooden post Aisa had ordered driven deep into the ground.
“I certainly hope that you have done everything that I think you have, otherwise this will be a waste, won’t it?” She sighed, stepping forward and drawing a long, thin-bladed stiletto knife from her robes.
“What have I done? Desai!” The little man tried to shout, but before he could, the older woman had crossed the small gap between them and raised one hand to clasp it over his open mouth.
“Shhh, my child. I am not angry with you. I have a very important mission for you, and you alone,” she said, pressing her mature but still warm and curvaceous body against his. The prisoner’s eyes rolled white over her hand, and sweat dripped from his brow, but he did not scream as Desai kept on talking.
“Now, I want you to carry a message for me, and it is a very important message, you hear me?” she whispered into the man’s terrified face.
He nodded, once.
“Good.” Aisa slipped the needle-thin blade between the ribs that surrounded his heart, and his body stiffened. A gargling moan escaped as he tried to thrash, but the pain was too much for any man to bear. He started to cough thick red blood that oozed from between the sorceress’s fingers.
“When you die, you will be dragged to hell, there to be reborn as some measly spirit to redo your life, endlessly and endlessly until you get it right,” she purred at him, as the man started to choke on his own blood, and slump to the floor. “Maybe next time you will never join the military, or you will decide to fight against the Menaali a generation from now, or you will open a sanctuary for abandoned kittens—I really couldn’t care less—but for now?” She raised one eyebrow as his eyelids started to flutter.
“Now you will be dragged through hell, and I want you to bear a message for me. If there is anyone listening down there, any imp that hates the devil Ikrit so much that they would dare defy the gods, then now is their chance. I am offering them an army and a way into this world, and enough blood to feast on from here until eternity.”
The man’s eyes rolled back into his head, but Aisa Desai shook him, squeezing the blade in his heart and bringing him back for a moment of agonizing life.
“You hear me? Tell them if they want Ikrit, then they come and get him!” she demanded, and the man groaned his last, and lay on the floor.
Aisa stood up, wrenching the blade from the soldier’s heart and wiping it on her own robes. “What a way to get something done,” she muttered to herself, crossing to the low wooden table that stood beside the drapes that surrounded her bed. She filled a cup of deep red wine and gulped it greedily. Killing someone was always thirsty work, and the woman still knew that she had a lot to do before the deed was done.
Aisa scowled, finishing her glass and hurrying to select six red candles and set them about the room. They burned with a heavy, musky odor that was almost sickly sweet.
She pulled aside the drapes that led to her bed, and found lying atop there a small collection of scrolls and one grimoire, open on the last page she had been reading. An Encyclopaedia of Devils, which she had taken from the Tower of Records in Tir’an’fal itself.
The funny thing was, Aisa considered to herself as she read the scrolls once more, was that she might have been happy to stop at sacking her ancestral home. The warlord had wanted his ridiculous daughter healed of the demon-illness, and she had masterminded it to happen. She had not thought that her contacts in the city of Fuldoon would ever warn her later that she had released none other than one of the Greater Abominations. A devil almost as old as the world itself.
“Oh, Sadgast, where would I be without your advice?” Aisa said to the scroll, unaware that Sadgast the ‘smuggler’ was no more.
‘The devil’s name is Ikrit,’ the smuggler’s letter had said. ‘And hell will pay handsomely to get it back.’
“Let us see just how much the lords of hell will pay,” she mused, stacking her papers and grimoire into a bundle and putting it out of sight. Instead, she rang a steel bell at her bedside, and the same hulking guard who she had been talking to just a moment earlier rushed into her room.
“My Desai, you rang?” he said without any hesitation, but his eyes blinked when they saw the body of his fellow soldier lying in the center of the room, his blood pooling on the thick woven rugs, and his sightless eyes rolled into the back of his head.
“Do you wish me to clean this up?” the soldier said gruffly.
“No, not yet anyway. After we are done, maybe.” Aisa laughed, as she slipped off her gown and stepped onto the bed. She knew that the guard admired her, and she knew that he would do anything for his lord the Dal Grehb, and for her, the warlords chosen. “Bring the wine, guard, and come here. I wish to ask you a question.”
“Yes, Desai.” The soldier’s voice went a notch lower as he stepped over the body, towards the sorceress.
“How much would you do to obey me, guard?” she asked, standing on the bed in front of him, and only a few feet away. Her eyes were heavy, but her smile was as pleased as a cat’s.
“Anything in the service of the Dal Grehb, Desai,” he answered immediately.
“And how much do you really want to please me, guard?”
A hesitation, as the guard’s face flushed. “Anything, Desai.”
“Would you offer me anything? For the glory of the Menaali?” she said casually.
“Anything for the glory of the Menaali.”
“Then give your body, your mind, and your soul to me.” Ai
sa Desai laughed, turning to step deeper onto her bed, one hand dragging the guard behind him. The sorceress didn’t know how long it would take for a message to get through to hell, but she wanted to have a willing vessel ready when it did. She had chosen this one already for his fanatical loyalty to the Dal Grehb, and his simple superstition. The sorceress knew how to break a man’s will, and she knew that by the time a devil answered her call, one strong enough to break the siege of Fuldoon and defeat Ikrit, she would have the perfect vehicle for it in the body of this guard.
Aisa Desai giggled.
5
Vekal thought about waving to the fisherman’s boat as it pulled out of the small harbor, but considered it probably improper, given what had happened. He was amazed that he had even managed to convince them to drop him off on dry land at all, and not instead try to ditch him in the sea.
“They could have tried. Even in your feeble state I would have been able to disembowel the old one with our hands.” Vekal felt a sudden buzz of pressure against the back of his eyes as his old colleague, the thing that was hidden inside of him like a canker buzzed and spoke.
“My hands,” Vekal murmured to himself. He was still annoyed with the devil. Well, annoyed really wasn’t the word for what he felt. It was more furious.
“Oh, don’t get your robes in a twist, priest,” the devil hidden under his own mind sneered.
Vekal blinked and grimaced. The feel of the devil’s mind against his own was sudden and sharp, like the stab of a pain. The priest wondered why it was starting to hurt once more, like the first time that he had been possessed by Ikrit.
“Because I had a holiday, you lumbering meat-sack.” The devil sighed, causing another headache to flash across the man’s temples. “I jumped ship for a bit. Had an away-vacation. Looked on pastures new. What did you think happened back there?”
“You were going to abandon me to die,” Vekal said, and couldn’t help from keeping the feeling of sullen betrayal out of his voice. He wondered why he felt betrayed at all. After all, he was talking to a devil, a fiend of the pit, one of the unformed spirits of the Unliving Halls, doomed to an eternity of cruelty and despair. Betrayal was what these things did for a living.
