by Tim Stead
“All of them?”
“All of them. Go. Now.”
Heranad ran into the tower crouched over. More arrows followed him, one picking at the mail shirt on his back and spinning away into the stone of the wall behind, shattering into splinters.
It took Heranad a few moments to get back outside again, crouched even lower. He was carrying a wooden box. He put it down beside Tragil. It held seven bottles. It might be enough.
“You’re a rogue, Heranad,” he picked out a couple of bottles, and pulling the corks replaced them with cloth that he tore from his shirt.
“Fire bombs,” Heranad said, smiling. He did the same to another two bottles, and together they lit the soaked cloth tails of the makeshift grenades and threw them into the mass of soldiers at the foot of the remaining staircase. If the wood had not been so dry, if the alcohol had not been so pure, it might have failed, but the arid winter was unexpectedly a blessing, and the stairs became a bonfire. Burning men ran screaming from the flames, and an angry flight of arrows rattled the stone wall above where he and Heranad crouched
It was time to close the gate.
He gathered men around him. They grouped as close to the wall as they could press themselves, crouched low. More than one of them was bloodied, though if it was their own blood they ignored their wounds. They were good men, most of them soldiers of the best kind. He explained quickly what they would attempt to do, and he saw in their eyes that they knew it was a desperate thing, a task from which there would be no return. He was warmed by their grim nods, their acceptance of their duty.
“There is no need for you to lead us, sir,” Heranad said. “We can do it.”
Tragil smiled. “And how would I explain it to your wife, Heranad?” he asked. “I fear her wrath more than death.” Heranad’s wife was indeed something of a terror, not in the least shy of telling officers how to do their work, and the men crouched about him smiled.
Six men and himself, he dared take no fewer. He risked a look over the edge, down at the press of Telan soldiers below. There were a surprising number of dead men among the living down there. Where they would land was just five paces from the counterweight rope, the place where it was exposed to a sword blade. It would take three or four blows to cut it, he guessed, thick as it was.
“Ready?” he asked. The men nodded.
Tragil tumbled over the side of the platform. It was near twenty feet down to the ground where the enemy stood, and he contrived to land on hands and feet together, then sprang up and slashed at the nearest Telan. He took the man by surprise, and killed him with the single blow, the others pulling back for a moment. It was the gap his men needed to recover themselves unscathed.
He took the few steps to the rope and slashed at it. Behind him his men formed a curtain of steel, protecting him from the great mass of the enemy. The rope, though, was tougher than he expected. He hacked at it again and again, and saw strands rip away, but the body of it seemed uncut.
All my life’s work come to this, he thought, and to fail for want of a sharper sword or a stronger arm.
Then it went, a quarter of the rope parting, twisting and shrinking from the cut as the great weight of the stone pulled it away. Another blow and another cluster of parting threads; one more would see it done.
Something struck him in the back with stunning force and he was thrown forwards, through the gate. He landed face down in the dirt, and scrambled upright, amazed that there was no pain, no apparent injury.
He looked back to see Heranad grinning at him from the other side of the gate.
“Look after the others, Major,” he shouted. A sword flashed, and the great stone fell. It hit the ground with a sound that shook Tragil to his bones. Dust jumped from the ground, and then, for a moment the world seemed to pause. Sounds of fighting stopped. He looked around and saw that two Telan soldiers were standing on the same side of the gate.
He looked at them, and they looked at him. One of them took a step towards him, but a volley of arrows from the walls above felled them both. He looked up. Men were tumbling from the walls. His men. Now that the Telans had no way to attack the men on the fighting platform they were doing as he had feared, pulling back and getting a better angle for their archers.
In two minutes it was over. The wall was abandoned, and Tragil stood with the remainder of his force on the Telan side of the Green Road pass. Feran was there, his arm now strapped up in a crude sling. Now they had to get away quickly. The ground before the wall was a killing ground, stripped of trees and rocks by generations of Berashi commanders so that no Telan could hide within bowshot of the walls. Now it was Berashi who stood exposed. Four hundred yards away there was a thin forest clinging to the side of the pass. It thickened out into woodland, and that was where they must hide. It would take the Telans a week to lift the gate, but probably a few minutes before the first archers climbed up to the platform.
“To the woods,” he called. Some of the men were injured, and he took his place alongside one of them, helping him towards safety, an arm tight across his shoulders. The man had an arrow in his leg above the knee, but he didn’t complain.
It took what seemed an age to cover the distance to the shelter of the trees, and all the time Tragil expected arrows to pursue them at any moment. It was his turn now to feel that itch between the shoulder blades, but he fought against it, deliberately slowing his step so that his men would know that he was not afraid.
They passed the first trees – out of range now, safe from arrows, but he pushed them on, further into the woods until he was certain that they were out of sight from the walls. Only then did he allow them to stop and rest, lowering the injured man from his shoulder. He sought out Feran.
“How many of us, Lieutenant?” he asked.
Feran was sitting with his back against a tree. He made to get up, but Tragil waved him back down.
“I counted ninety-three, sir,” he said. “Sixteen are injured.”
“Including you?”
“Seventeen, then.”
Less than eighty fit men, no food, no shelter, and they were on enemy ground, cut off from reinforcements or help. They were safe for the moment, it was true, but it was a long road ahead of them.
“Sir?”
He looked back at Feran. The young man was leaning forwards with an earnest expression on his face.
“What is it, Feran?”
“You did a good job, Sir,” Feran said. “Nobody could have held the gate, and we were fortunate to get away with so many lives saved.”
“We will see, Feran. We will see.”
34. Narak
Narak leapt from his seat at the sound of the voice in his head. It was as clear as though she spoke in his ear, and at once he knew who it was, and how she spoke.
Pascha, and the calling ring.
“Narak, they are here,” she said. “Seth Yarra are here, in Telas. There are great numbers of them. I cannot say for certain, but there are one hundred and thirty-four ships in Benafelas Bay, and many men come from each. Tens of thousands of men, all ashore, and the Telans do not oppose them. They have betrayed you, Narak. They have betrayed us all.”
The voice cut off as abruptly as it had begun. Narak wanted to enter the Sirash, to speak to her at once, but the news was grave. He had to confirm what she had said.
“What is it?” The Eagle God’s voice dragged him back to reality, to here and now.
Jiddian was staring at him. A moment before they had been sitting side by side looking down on the Seth Yarra camp, discussing strategy, although in truth Narak did not have a great wish to share his thoughts. He had discussed strategy with Remard, but no other. Remard had been different.
“Do you have eyes in Telas?” he asked.
“I have eyes everywhere,” Jiddian replied, pride in his voice.
“Then look to the coast, Benafelas Bay, and tell me what you see.”
Jiddian met his eyes for a moment, and then sat back folding his arms allowing his eyeli
ds to close and his breathing to slow. Narak had no wolves so far south, and it would take days for them to get there. He was reliant on others. It was something he did not like very much, to rely on others, on their eyes and their abilities, and yet his task here was the generalling of an army, and delegation was the essence of it.
If he was in the Sirash he could ask Pascha to show him, but if she was free, if they had not captured her she would even now be fleeing to the north, might already be on the borders of the great forest, or even in Durandar.
“Pelion’s Blood!” Jiddian came out of the Sirash like an arrow from his bow. The energy of his rush from darkness carried him to his feet, and his hand to the hilt of his sword.
“It is true, then?” Narak asked.
“Seth Yarra,” Jiddian said. “Is that what you expected? Thousands of the bastards. They are already ashore and building camps. The kingdom will fall.”
“It has already been surrendered,” Narak said. The Telans, King Terresh and Hestia, were all traitors. The Duranders had warned him about Hestia, and he had been happy to accept their troops. Where were those soldiers now? If Telas was against them then a thousand Telan soldiers were certainly not welcome anywhere east of the gate.
The gate. Of course the gate. They would just march through, and the Berashi would open it on Narak’s word, at the invocation of his name. He did not know how many men the Berashi kept at the gate, but it was fewer than a thousand, and with surprise on their side the gate would fall to the Telans, and the Telans would open it to Seth Yarra.
“We are caught indeed.” Jiddian said. It was true. They faced an army nearly the equal of their own, barricaded behind walls, waiting for their assault, but now there was an army behind them, too. The Berashi would want to defend their home, and with the gate open it would be a race between them and Seth Yarra to see who got there first, a race that Seth Yarra would win.
Yet for all the pointlessness of it, the Berashi would want to leave, and he needed the Dragon Guard; they were an important element in his strategy.
“Do not tell them,” he said to Jiddian. “Not a word. First we must defeat this army or we will be indeed trapped, the iron between the hammer and the anvil.”
“I will not lie,” Jiddian said. There was a reproach in his voice, but Narak brushed it aside.
“I do not ask you to lie, Jiddian. Just don’t moon around the camp looking like something is on your mind. Don’t invite people to ask you. It will be days before any news leaks back from Telas, and in those days we will do things to change the situation. By they time they discover the truth it will not matter.”
“You have a plan, then?”
“I do,” Narak said, and surprisingly he did. It was a simple plan, a scavenger’s plan made up out of bits and pieces, and he was by no means certain that it would work, but at least he had a plan. “I must enter the Sirash, I must translocate,” he said. “I will need most of the day to do what needs to be done. Can you have food and drink here when I return?”
“I will,” Jiddian assured him.
Narak lay back and closed his eyes. Of all the Benetheon he seemed to have the most trouble with the Sirash. Even Pascha entered it more easily, navigated with greater skill. This time he sank into the darkness with relative ease, and he swiftly moved east, searching out wolves.
Here. He dropped behind the eyes of a wolf and saw the Dragon’s Back, high, white peaks. He was a mile from the pass, a mile north along the eastern slopes of the mountains. The air was full of the sharpness of snow and ice, and there was smoke, burning flesh. He turned the wolf and set it to run as fast as it could. He needed to see the gate, to be sure.
It did not take long. The snow was absent from the lower slopes, and the wolf was young and healthy. It ran steadily. In ten minutes he could see the mouth of the pass, and the remains of a camp. For a moment he feared it was a Seth Yarra camp, that they were already in the Kingdom of Berash, but the wolf smelled Durander smells among the ashes, and he was reassured. Tracks went east, fresh tracks of a great many people, which meant that the Duranders were through the gate. It was another card to play. A thousand Duranders would be a useful force.
Then he was around the corner and looking up towards the gate. He saw smoke, he smelled death.
The wolf stopped and sat in the trees that clung to the lower slopes at the mouth of the pass in a place where it could see without being seen. The wall was a thousand paces away, but he could see enough. There had been fighting, and the men on the walls wore Telan armour, carried Telan weapons. Many horses were tethered nearby, and the smoke of funeral pyres rose into the sky. That, too, was a Telan custom. The Berashi buried their dead.
He released the wolf and fell back into the Sirash; searching once more. East, he drifted, not too far. Tor Silas was less than a hundred miles from the green road, and there was a wolf there, left in Raffin’s care for exactly this purpose. A wolf alone, a wolf among men marked out by its solitude. He found what he was looking for, looked out through wolf eyes and saw rooms in the court of King Raffin.
He translocated.
A guardsman on the door was startled when the wolf he was guarding suddenly became a man in armour, but quickly recovered. He bowed.
“Deus.”
“Take me to the king,” Narak commanded. The guard nodded and they set off through the castle at a brisk pace. Even at such a time, and with so much on his mind Narak noticed how empty the place was. Where he would have expected guards to stand there were empty spaces, and the castle had an air of desertion.
Raffin was surprised to see him. The king was sitting with several other people on a terrace overlooking the town. He rose as soon as Narak stepped out into the sun, bowed politely. All of his companions followed suit.
“Deus, how goes the war?”
“It develops slowly in the east, lord King,” he replied. “But there is grave news. The west has fallen. Even as we speak Seth Yarra troops gather in the south of Telas, and they will march on the gate.”
“They shall not come through the Green Road, Deus,” Raffin said. There was pride in his voice. He had faith in his commanders, and in his men, and most of all in the wall itself.
“The gate has already fallen, lord king. If we are to avert a disaster we must recapture it quickly.”
Raffin paled. He turned to his companions.
“Leave us,” he said. They did, each carrying a tale of disaster that Narak knew would be all around Tor Silas within the hour. It did not bother him. “How fallen, Deus?”
“We have been betrayed. The Telans have sided with Seth Yarra. The regiment they promised in aid has attacked the gate, probably as they passed through. About a thousand men now hold it.”
“And my men? All dead?”
“I do not know, lord king. Some may have escaped, but I could see there were many dead. There was no lack of vigour in their defence.”
Raffin sat again. The view from the terrace was magnificent. The town rolled away from them down to the river. The morning air smelled of wood smoke and baked bread, snow and cooking meats. Raffin ignored it, staring into a place that was not before him.
“What can we do? They will reinforce the gate. That much is certain. I have a few hundred men here, but I am loath to strip the city of its defences. I know, I know,” he said waving a hand before Narak could speak. “The city cannot be defended if the Green Road falls, but even if I send every man under arms I cannot find more than seven hundred, maybe eight. It is not enough.”
“There are others who can help. Even now a regiment of Durander soldiers marches through your kingdom. They will relish a fight with the Telans, and they number one thousand. There are men in Bas Erinor, too. If we summon them all we can have a force that is both large enough to retake the gate, and will arrive there before Seth Yarra.”
The king nodded. “And our men in the east? The Dragon Guard?”
“Even if they rode their hearts out they would not arrive at the gate before twenty th
ousand Seth Yarra marched through it. The only strategy that will serve is to destroy the army in the east, and then come fresh to what awaits us in the west. We must retake the gate and hold it.”
“There is sense in what you say, Deus, but are there enough men in Bas Erinor? If they must raise a levy it will take weeks, as it would for ourselves. There is no time.”
“Trust me, lord king. I will send men. I will turn the Duranders back to help you. Send what force you have to the mouth of the pass. The others will meet them there.”
You will lead them?”
“I will be busy killing Seth Yarra in the east, lord king. Send the best man you have here to lead them. I must go now. I must speak with others.”
“I will do as you say, Deus.” Raffin said. “But I am concerned…” He stopped speaking, realising that he now shared the terrace with a guard and a wolf. Narak was gone.
