“Did you do that?”
She shook her head and looked to where the strange priestly figures continued to work their fingers, eyes lightly, serenely closed.
“Who’s in command here?” shouted Garnet. “We need horsemen and a tight group of heavily armed and well-trained infantry to hold the gate after us.”
“Will,” said Renthrette earnestly. “Run around the walls and find the senior commanders. Tell them what we’re doing and have them support us if need be. Tell them we’ll stay on the bridge. We will not venture farther.”
And then they were gone. As the pair of them clattered off down the stairs with some corporal who was to lead them to the cavalry, I looked about me and tried to decide if this was a good development. No fighting for me, exactly, but a kind of importance: a kind unlikely to get me killed. An arrow with ragged black flights scudded over the parapet and fell against the back wall. I ducked my head and looked for the safest way out of there.
To my left was a tower with a door in it. I tried it and it opened, revealing a pair of fair-haired men who were loading and aiming a bolt-throwing catapult through a cross-shaped slit in the stone. They barely acknowledged me, so I ran behind them, out the other side of the tower, and onto the next section of wall. There, another group of archers were firing in ordered rows under the command of a stark, flushed sargeant.
“They’re going to send horsemen onto the bridge. Give them some covering fire,” I yelled at him.
“What? Who are you?” he shouted back, the veins on his neck bulging ominously.
“It doesn’t matter. . ”
“It does if you’re going to give me orders,” replied the officer.
“I’m a tactical advisor to Sorrail,” I lied hurriedly. “Now slow your fire until those horsemen come out underneath us. Cover the balustrades and pick off any goblins that get behind the cavalry.”
The sargeant hesitated for a second and then nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”
I ran on, tried the next door, and kept going, repeating the order to the next group of archers. I did it again and again until the archers were too far from the bridge to be of use, so I told them to shoot at the goblins as they climbed the sides. The next group were barely close enough even for that and could only pick off those goblins that moved too far upstream. The next set of guards were standing around waiting for instructions, so I sent them down to help hold the gate behind the cavalry. After that, the sections of walls between the towers were patrolled only by isolated men who regarded me with alarm and expectation as I came barreling through the towers, panting heavily.
I was getting bloody tired, and I was too far round the walls now to even see what was going on on the bridge. The cavalry could have charged out with total success, or, for all I knew, they could have been cut to pieces, Renthrette and Garnet with them. I slowed a little and considered running back the way I had come. I had to be at least halfway round the central fortress by now, however, and to go back made little sense. I took a long, wheezing breath, straightened up and began to run again. Three towers later I realized why I should have gone back.
The wall ended abruptly in scaffolding and piles of masonry. To my right was the back of the library where I had spent the morning, and in front of me was a huge hole in the wall, left over, I now remembered, from last year’s earthquake. The ramparts in front of me had buckled like parchment left in the sun and about twenty feet of impenetrable fortification had torn and slid into a dusty pile beneath. A timber structure had been erected over the top, presumably to aid in the reconstruction, but its highest point was a good ten yards lower than the level I was on. I leaned against a stack of immense stone blocks a yard on each side, lashed together and ready for the repairs to come, and peered down into the gorge beneath. It was quite a hole. It was a hell of a good thing that the walls sat at the river’s widest point.
All of a sudden I caught sight of a figure running from the library and bounding up the steps on the far side of the breach with a large crossbow in his hands. Correction:
The earnestness of her effort to be significantly involved in a battle taking place on the other side of the city amused me slightly and, chuckling, I leaned casually over the wall. My indulgent laughter perished.
On the bank below, three great war barges were beached. Each carried about thirty goblins, which were now spilling out and skulking cautiously, weapons poised and ready for the trap that wasn’t there, inching toward the gaping, inviting space that had once been the wall. Taking in the other barges which were gliding silently across behind them, I came to the inevitable conclusion: The battle was lost.
The stillness was broken by the snap-twang of Aliana’s crossbow. A large goblin fell to its knees clutching its shoulder and the others scattered instinctively, wheeling large, hide-covered shields up over their heads and scuttling for the cover of the boats and the walls. But no more bolts rained down on them from above and their high, caustic cries of alarm were quickly replaced by confused hissings. Their faces, invisible to me from the walls, turned to each other and they whispered fiercely. Then, with a cry of resolution, they began to emerge from their cover and, some shifting apprehensively, some running with long, rangy strides, they began moving toward the breach once more.
I, who had been clutching my parapet out of sight, allowed myself to breathe and looked hurriedly around. The guards, thanks to my tactical genius, had all gone to defend the gate, leaving the walls quite deserted. Then movement on the other side of the breech reminded me of Aliana. She fired again and, as before, the cry of pain from below was accompanied by a scramble for cover. But she was separated from me by twenty feet of air where the walls had been, and there was no one else to defend the place.
She looked across and recognized me in the dim light, but her eyes were hard. “Go for help, Mr. Hawthorne,” she shouted, but I was still exhausted from running over here in the first place, and I’d have to circumscribe three quarters of the city before I found anyone.
“Your side is closer to the front,” I shouted, moving toward the twenty-foot pile of roped stone blocks which rose like some monolithic tower out of the breach’s strewn boulders. “You go.”
She looked from the enemy to me and back, then she nodded, rocked onto her haunches and up into a sprinting run toward the nearest tower. In seconds she was gone. I swallowed hard and glanced over the wall.
The goblins, who had emerged rather faster than last time, were now straightening up and moving toward us, their eyes flashing from the undefended walls to the heaped rubble and wooden scaffold where the repairs were. It was a narrow pass and would necessitate them climbing over the masonry-strewn foundation and timber frame, but it wouldn’t take them more than a few minutes to get through. Perhaps I could pick them off one by one as they swung themselves over the scaffolding. .
This was crazy. I wondered if by moving around and firing from different spots I could trick them into thinking the walls were stuffed with guards lying in wait. No. I couldn’t fire anything like fast enough to make that work.
So, as is often my response to finding myself in a tight corner, I started to talk. Aloud. To myself.
“Are they close enough?”
“Not yet.”
“Just a few more feet.”
“Are they ready on the other side?”
“Yes. They won’t know what hit them.”
“Get that catapult ready. Pass me those bolts.”
“Ready, sir. . ”
I was never that good at voices, really, but I figured I’d just created at least six different people with accents from various parts of Thrusia, Shale, and the Empire. One of them sounded drunk and another was mentally subnormal, but then, so was I for trying something this laughably destined to fail.
The fact remained, however, that Aliana’s shots had come from the other side of the breach and this exercise in auditory puppetry, however inept, had the goblins slowing and gazing up at the other side of the fractured wall with sudden apprehension. There was a pause as words were exchanged between them. For a moment, nothing seemed to move, then several of the goblins turned back to the shore and my hopes were shattered as surely as the wall itself had been.
Another barge had landed. Its prow was a great door that fell heavily on the shingle with a dull splash. The
