seen and make our way out to these coordinates-we'll be headed north-northeast, into the near hills, to meet the shuttle.'
'What is a shuttle?' asked Aleksi.
'It's a kind of a ship. Can you manage it?'
'Yes,' said Aleksi. 'I can manage it. But why must we go so secretly?'
Soerensen looked out at the camp. 'Damn it,' he said to no one in particular. 'But it has to be done.'
'What has to be done?' asked Marco mildly.
Soerensen urged his horse forward, and Aleksi and Marco came up on either side of him. 'Today, the Prince of Jeds has to die.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Dawn came. David watched as the siege engines fired, and fired again. Clay pots filled with naphtha were launched into the city, and smoke began to rise up from within the walls into the heavens. He wiped sweat from his brow and helped a limping man back away from the engine, and sent another to take his place.
The rumble of the towers rolling into place reached his ears, and the higher sound of metal on metal, the clash of arms. He had no good view of the walls. He did not want one. Already wounded men-khaja laborers all- struggled back from the front lines, those that could. David knew well enough that others lay alive but wounded under the killing rain of arrows, helpless to get themselves free. If they were lucky, once the battle moved beyond the walls, they could be rescued. Cara had laid down the law firmly enough for Bakhtiian: All persons in the jaran army received care or none did. David wondered what would happen when Cara got hold of the first wounded enemy soldiers, assuming that any lived long enough to get so far.
Suddenly, a man shouted a warning and two riders escorting David shoved him down. There was a crash. Splinters flew through the air. A man screamed out in pain. Debris peppered David's helmet, and dust coated his vision.
He scrambled up and ran forward. A lucky hit for the Karkand engineers: They had hit a siege engine far enough back from the lines that no one had thought it within range. Four men lay tangled in the wreckage, bleeding, moaning; one was silent and twisted at a horrific angle.
David coughed through the dust. 'I need men to carry these wounded out!' Laborers had scattered back from the hit, terrified. Now, heartened by his presence, they hurried forward to aid him. David tested the mechanism, but it had been thoroughly smashed.
'We'll give this one up,' he shouted. 'Here, move that one back ten paces, and I want screens over the men there.'
Riders and khaja laborers ran to do his bidding. He had a sudden flash, watching them work together, that this was why he had come out here today to help kill poor innocents on the other side of the wall: so mat in time, all of them could learn to work together. It was a poor excuse for a rationalization, but it helped him live with himself.
The other engines fired on with renewed vigor. David took himself back and sat down to try and figure out the trajectory of the rock, to see if they could target the enemy's artillery.
Ursula el Kawakami braced herself as the tower shuddered forward toward the wall. Inside, it was dark and stuffy; she felt the others pressed around her, about half of them Farisa auxiliaries and half jaran riders- unmounted now, of course-who had volunteered for the first assault, mostly young men from granddaughter tribes and servant families, hoping to win a name for themselves and a greater share of the loot. From outside, she heard the steady hammering of arrows against the wooden tower and she smelted burning pitch: They were trying to set the tower on fire, but it was covered with leather soaked in water and a lotion called firebane, and she doubted it would catch.
What did it matter, anyway? For all of her life, Ursula had wanted nothing more than to fight in battle. Not for her the martial arts craze that had swept through League space, offering aggressive young men and women an outlet. War was an ugly, primitive business, and an unacceptable means for resolving conflict. Everyone knew that.
Ursula supposed it might even be true, but she hadn't cared. From childhood on she had closeted herself in the net and immersed herself in accounts of Salamanca and Crecy, Cannae and Tyre, the bloody trenches of Verdun and the battle of the Pelennor Fields.
A thud shook the tower, slamming her into the side. She tucked and took the impact on her shoulder, and her armor absorbed much of it. The men were really packed too close here to fall down. Above her, she heard the sing of arrows from the covered platform at the top of the tower: the archers, spraying fire down onto the wall. From below, she heard shrieks and cries from the men rolling the great tower forward as stones rained down on them from the walls. Still, the tower advanced.
With a jolt, the wheels met the base of the wall. At once, Ursula sprang into action. She shouted and two auxiliaries cranked out the door, and as if by magic the plank reached and reached-not quite there-and then slapped down onto the parapet of the great wall of Karkand, making a bridge. Early morning light streamed in on them.
With two men on either side of her, Ursula led the charge. She howled. They took up her call and ran, to hit the Habakar defenders before they could foray out onto the bridge. The wood jounced under her feet, and she felt men behind, pounding after them. Arrows showered over them, toward the wall, and a spray of arrows peppered them from the defenders, but their armor was strong. And Ursula had drilled these units, in any case, in the use of shields and swords and spears in close formation.
Three Habakar soldiers scrambled up onto the bridge, but Ursula and the jaran man next to her hit them hard and simply shoved them back. They fell over the side, falling hard on the ramp. Men scattered away from them. Ursula jumped down, landing hard, and set about herself with her sword. She hacked through the first rank, pushing them back. Shields rose in front of her and she shoved and pounded at them, cut at faces and arms and exposed chests. An arrow stuck in her shield; another stuck in the armor covering her right thigh, and then the arrow fire ceased to bother her.
A spear thrust. She flinched away and felt the spear impact her companion. He fell, screaming, and she shouted: 'Close up ranks! Close up!' And stepped over the fallen man and kept pressing forward. Another shieldman came forward next to her, and a man on the other side, and they took step by slow step forward, pushing, catching blows and turning them aside, striking-there! — and a man crumpled before them. She took a great stride, to get over his body, and moved forward.
Behind, she heard shouts. 'Move up! There! Fire a volley!' Swords battered on shields. Men yelled. Feet thudded on the stone ramparts, and smoke and dust rose from the city, clinging to the walls and throwing the acrid scent of burning into her face. A roar of sound swelled up from the city itself, the blare of trumpets, the ringing of bells, the bellowing of pack animals, the neighing of horses, shouts and sobs and the clatter of wagons and troops of horsemen all soaring on the wind and blending with the din of battle.
Distantly, she heard: 'They're coming up the other side. Krukov is falling back!' But the enemy line before her wavered and she pressed forward.
'Fall back! Fall back!' The words came closer here, just behind her.
She risked a glance behind. By the bridge, fighting swirled and, on the bridge itself, men stood still, staring, stuck out there while arrow fire blurred over them, shattered into them. The archers atop the platform fired in sheets, but it wasn't enough.
'Open up that bridge!' she shouted, but they could not hear her. 'Close ranks!' she cried, and stepped back, letting another man come forward in her place as she pushed back through her own line.
Beyond, on the other side of the bridge, Habakar soldiers in blue and white shoved steadily into the jar an incursion, pushing them back. Ursula felt a cold rage descend on her. How dare they ruin her perfect tactics? A rush onto the parapet, down the ramps, and open the great gates; like Godfrey at Jerusalem, letting the Crusader hordes in to sack the city.
'Move forward! Let those men down! Advance, you fools!' What was it von Clausewitz said? There is nothing in War which is of greater importance than obedience.' 'Advance!'
A spear thrust. She ducked instinctively away from it, and it took her two entire heartbeats to register the
