Memories of Ice

'What do you think? They boiled over us, through the gate, up the towers, over the damned walls.' Her head snapped back, as if she had just taken an invisible blow. A flat calm settled over her eyes. 'It was room by room. One on one. A Seerdomin found me-' Another jolt ran through her. 'But the bastard left me alive. So I hunted him down. Come on, let's move!' She snapped her main gauche back at Gruntle as they hurried on, spraying his chest and face with bile and watery shit. 'I carved him inside out, and damn if he didn't beg.' She spat. 'Didn't work for me — why should it have for him? What a fool. A pathetic, whimpering…'

Hurrying in her wake, it was a moment before Gruntle understood what she was saying. Oh, Stonny.

Her steps slowed suddenly, her face turning white. She twisted round, met his eyes with a look of horror. 'This was supposed to be a fight. A war. That bastard-' She leaned against the wall. 'Gods! '

The others continued on, too dazed to notice, or perhaps too numb to care.

Gruntle moved to her side. 'Carved him from the inside out, did you?' he asked softly, not daring to reach out and touch her.

Stonny nodded, her eyes squeezed shut, her breath coming in harsh, pained gasps.

'Did you save any of him for me, lass?'

She shook her head.

'That's too bad. Then again, one Seerdomin's as good as another.'

Stonny stepped forward, pressing her face into his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her. 'Let's get out of this fight, lass,' he murmured. 'I got a clean room, with a basin in it and a stove and a jug of water. A room, close enough to the north wall for it to be safe. It's at the end of a hallway. Only one way in. I'll stand outside the door, Stonny, for as long as you need. No-one gets past. That's a promise.' He felt her nod. He reached down to lift her up.

'I can walk.'

'But do you want to, lass? That's the question.'

After a long moment, she shook her head.

Gruntle lifted her easily. 'Nap if you've mind to,' he said. 'You're safe enough.'

He set off, skirting the wall, the woman curling up in his arms, her face pressed hard against his tunic, the rough cloth growing wetter there.

Behind them, the Scalandi were dying by the hundreds, the Grey Swords and Capanthall delivering dread slaughter.

He wanted to be there with them. In the front line. Taking life after life.

One Seerdomin was not enough. A thousand would not be enough.

Not now.

He felt himself grow cold, as if the blood within him was now something else, flowing a bitter course along his veins, reaching out to fill his muscles with a strange, unyielding strength. He had never before felt such a thing, but he was beyond thinking about it. There were no words for this.

Nor, he would soon discover, were there words to describe what he would become, what he would do.

The slaughter of the K'Chain Che'Malle by the Kron T'lan Imass and the undead ay had thrown the Septarch and his forces into disarray, as Brukhalian had predicted. The confusion and the immobility it engendered had added days to Shield Anvil Itkovian's preparations for the siege to come. But now, the time for preparing had ended, and Itkovian was left with the command of the city's defences.

There would be no T'lan Imass, no T'lan Ay, to come to their rescue. And no relieving army to arrive with the last grain of the hourglass. Capustan was on its own.

And so it shall be. Fear, anguish and despair.

From his position atop the highest tower on the Barracks Wall, after Destriant Karnadas had left and the stream of messengers began its frenzied flow, he had watched the first concerted movement of enemy troops to the east and southeast, the rumbling appearance of siege weapons. Beklites and the more heavily armoured Betaklites marshalling opposite Port Gate, with a mass of Scalandi behind and to either side of them. Knots of Seerdomin shock troops, scurrying bands of Desandi — sappers — positioning still more siege weapons. And, waiting in enormous, sprawling encampments along the river and the coast, the seething mass of the Tenescowri.

He had watched the assault on the outside fortification of the Gidrath's East Watch redoubt, already isolated and surrounded by the enemy; had seen the narrow door battered down, the Beklites pushing into the passageway, three steps, two steps, one, then a standstill, and moments later, a step back, then another, bodies being pulled clear. Still more bodies. The Gidrath — the elite guards of the Mask Council — had revealed their discipline and determination. They expelled the intruders, raised yet another barricade in place of the door.

The Beklites outside had milled for a time, then they renewed their assault.

The battle continued through the afternoon, yet each time that Itkovian pulled his attention away from other events he saw that the Gidrath still held. Taking enemy lives by the score. Twisting that thorn in the Septarch's midst.

Finally, near dusk, siege weapons were wheeled about. Huge boulders were hurled against the fortress's walls. The pounding concussions continued as the last of daylight fell away.

Beyond this minor drama, the assault against the city's walls had begun on all sides. The north attack proved a feint, poorly executed and so quickly recognized as insignificant. Messengers relayed to the Shield Anvil that a similar cursory engagement was under way at the west wall.

The true assaults were delivered upon the south and east walls, concentrated at the gates. Itkovian, positioned directly between them, was able to directly oversee the defence on both sides. He was visible to the enemy, and more than one missile had been fired in his direction, only a few coming close. This was the first day. Range and accuracy would improve in the days to come. Before long, he might have to yield his vantage point; in the meantime, he would let his presence mock the attackers.

As the Beklites and Betaklites rushed the walls, the ladder-bearing Desandi among them, Itkovian gave the command for counterfire from the walls and block towers. The ensuing slaughter was horrific. The attackers had not bothered with turtles or other forms of cover, and so died in appalling droves.

Yet such were their numbers that the gates were reached, battering rams deployed, and breaches effected. The Pannions, however, after pushing through the passageways, found themselves in open concourses that became killing grounds as Grey Swords and Capanthall archers launched a withering crossfire from behind barricades blocking side streets, intersections and alley mouths.

The Shield Anvil's strategy of layered defence was proving murderously efficient. Subsequent counterattacks had been so effective as to permit sorties beyond the gates, a vicious pursuit of fleeing Pannions. And, this day at least, none of the companies he'd sent out had gone too far. Discipline had held among the Capanthall, the Lestari and the Coralessian companies.

The first day was over, and it belonged to Capustan's defenders.

Itkovian stood on trembling legs, the coastal breeze building to dry the sweat from his face, sending cool tendrils through the half-visor's grille to brush his smoke-reddened eyes. As darkness closed around him, he listened to the rocks pounding the East Watch redoubt, and turned for the first time in hours to view the city.

Entire blocks were aflame, the fires reaching into the night sky, lighting the underbelly of a turgid canopy of solid smoke. I knew what I would see. Why then does it shock me? Drive the blood from my veins? Suddenly weak, he leaned against the merlon behind him, one hand pressed against the rough stone.

A voice spoke from the shadows of the tower's doorway. 'You need rest, sir.'

Itkovian closed his eyes. 'Destriant, you speak the truth.'

'But there will be no rest,' Karnadas resumed. 'The other half of the attacking force is assembling. We can expect assaults through the night.'

'I know, sir.'

'Brukhalian-'

'Aye, it must be done. Come forward, then.'

'Such efforts are increasingly difficult,' Karnadas murmured as he strode up to stand before the Shield Anvil. He laid a hand against Itkovian's chest. 'The illness of the warrens threatens me,' he continued. 'Soon it will be all I