fought it — it did not enter into the equation here, for the city or the people in it.
There must be a way, he thought, tapping his knuckle on the stone of the ramparts. It cannot be the end. We will hold the walls until they tire of attacking. There are not enough of them to besiege this city — they must attack.
‘They have been felling trees and building at something in that lumber-yard of theirs for three days now,’ Gemeris said beside him.
‘These walls are a hundred and fifty feet high,’ Kouros told him. ‘No-one can make a ladder that long.’
‘They’re not making ladders, my lord; that I would swear to. They have a pitchworks and a tannery set up, and half a hundred forges with smiths beating upon iron night and day. You can see the red gleam of them in the dark. The Macht have a genius with machines of war. They are at some devilment to see them over this wall, or through it, or under it.’
‘Nothing can bring down this wall, Gemeris. It has survived earthquakes.’
The Honai said nothing, and Kouros felt a rush of anger as he sensed the doubt in the man.
‘Send to me if anything changes. I am going to walk the towers and make an inspection.’
‘My lord, that is not your place.’
‘What?’
Gemeris was white-faced but insistent. ‘You are Great King. It is not for you to patrol the walls like a junior officer. Your place is not here. The people expect their king to be where he — ’
‘Where he belongs?’
‘Where tradition has him. Forgive me, lord, but you should be up on the ziggurat, not down in the middle of the fight.’
Kouros simmered. There was something to that.
‘We cannot lose another king,’ Gemeris said. ‘I beg you, my lord, go back to the palace.’
‘Very well. But I want a despatch every hour, Gemeris, even if nothing so much as a mouse stirs. You will keep me informed.’
‘As you wish, my lord.’
Kouros turned away. As he walked towards the stair that led down to the city below, he realised that a fundamental thing in him had changed since Gaugamesh.
He was no longer a coward.
The sun rose, the city went about its business much as it had these past four thousand years and more. With one difference. All the western gates were closed now, and the markets on that side of the city were thinly attended. Honai had been marching through the streets these last few days, seizing any man who was young, of low-caste, and who looked fit to hold a spear. The unfortunates had been rounded up in their thousands, hastily equipped from the city arsenals, and then shunted up in droves to man the walls. They stood there now among the Honai and the Arakosans, as out of place as pigeons among a flock of vultures.
They were present to see the labours of the Macht bear fruit. On the morning of the fifth day, the enemy army began to march in thick columns out of its encampments, tens of thousands of troops emerging in bristling phalanxes to take up positions on the plain, trampling the crops and vineyards of the small farms. The trees had long since been hewn down, the irrigation ditches filled in. The fertile country west of the city had been trampled bare and brown, as though the Macht had brought some blight with them out of the west.
And in the midst of the massing enemy formations, great beetle-like shapes moved, crawling titans hauled and pushed by hundreds of the foe. They rolled on crude iron-rimmed wheels, and they were plated with bronze shields which looked from afar like a hide of bright scales. From the front of each poked the gleam of a steel- tipped ram. Two of these monstrosities were trundling to each of the three western gates of the city, and behind them, mule-trains were drawing other machines, angular crane-like contraptions, and great horizontal bows.
The horns of the city watch brayed out in warning and defiance, and the defenders began readying themselves for what was to come. The pitch-cauldrons were filled and the fires below them lit. Sheaves of arrows were heaved up to the Arakosans, and lumps of masonry were set to hand on the tops of the walls, ready to be hurled down upon the attackers.
For a few minutes, in the wake of the horn-calls, the great city came as close to silence as it ever had, and it was in something of a hush that the Honai manning the wall saw the Macht king himself ride out in his horsehair-crested helmet with a cluster of aides. Three of them broke off and galloped right up to the city gates bearing a green branch, and Gemeris stood on the heights of the barbican with Lorka beside him to hear them out.
They were Kefren riders, dressed in red; men of the enemy cavalry known as the Companions. Lorka’s face tightened as he saw them. Gemeris stood up on a merlon, a golden statue ablaze in the sun.
‘That’s far enough. Speak and be quick!’
One rode forward. To the shock of all on the ramparts, they saw that though he was a Kefre of good blood, he wore the black cursed armour of the Macht, a phenomenon never seen before.
‘I bring you an offer from my king, Corvus of the Macht, ruler of all the lands west of the Magron Mountains. Open your gates, surrender your city and lay down your arms. If you do this, he will look upon you as friends. Ashur will be spared, and not a man of you will be harmed or dispossessed, save he who calls himself Great King.
‘If you do not do this, then we will assault your walls within the hour, and once they are breached, Ashur shall be given over to sack and flame, and the lives of all those who bear arms within your walls shall be forfeit. My king awaits your answer, but be swift, and do not think of any treachery. That is all.’
He raised the green branch in salute, and the three horsemen turned and galloped back the way they had come. The smell of burning pitch drifted along the walls, borne by a hot breeze. Gemeris leapt down from the merlon. ‘Get me a good scribe, and a fast runner — quickly!’
‘I must go,’ Lorka said.
‘Do not go far. You’ll be needed here soon enough.’
‘I know my duty,’ the Arakosan snarled. ‘Do not presume to teach me it, Honai.’
The balcony of the Great King’s chambers possessed a view unmatched anywhere else in the world, and it looked west. While standing there, Kouros could survey the grid-pattern of the teeming streets below that was barely discernable when one was walking among them. He could see the grey python of the walls with their punctuating towers, and beyond that, the trampled umber plain which the Macht had made their own.
All things, they destroy, he thought. They come from a land of stone, and reduce to stone and dust everything they touch. They are a pestilence upon this world.
The fine material of the curtains moved inwards as the door to his chambers was opened, though he heard no noise.
‘Akanish?’ he called, but the chamberlain did not answer.
Kouros turned to pour himself more wine from the decanter on the table at his side, and as he turned his eyes caught a flash of blue.
It was Orsana. His mother stood motionless in a simple robe, azure silk hemmed in black. She had thrown back a komis of snow-white linen from her face, but left the material framing her head. She looked like some stern-faced priestess about to engage in an ancient rite.
‘Mother! These are my private chambers. It is not fitting that you be here.’
She was carrying a square of parchment with a broken seal. ‘News from the gates. You should read it.’
He set down the cup and snatched it out of her hand, scanning the seal first.
‘Gemeris. This should have come straight to me.’
‘Read it.’
The clear hand of a scribe, the ink spattered in his haste. Kouros’s jaw worked as he read, chewing on anger.
‘I thought I knew what arrogance was; it seems I was mistaken. The barbarian at the gates sees fit to dictate terms to me — to me!’ He tossed the parchment aside. ‘This has no relevance. But I do want to know why it came to you instead of straight to me, mother.’ The anger was still there. He chewed on it like gristle.
His mother was very calm.
