contrary to Martellus’ prediction, been no direct attack on the eastern fortifications. Instead Shahr Baraz had brought up his heavy guns, emplaced them behind stout revetments and begun an artillery duel with the guns in the eastern barbican. He had lost heavily in men and material in the first deployment, but once his pieces were secure the more numerous Merduk heavy culverins had begun to pound the Torunnan fort on the eastern bank to rubble. The bombardment had continued unabated for thirty-six hours. Most of Andruw’s guns were silenced, and the eastern barbican was holed and breached in several places. Only a scratch garrison remained there. The rest had been withdrawn back over the river to the island, that long strip of land between the river and the dyke.
“The heavy charges are in place. When they occupy the eastern fort they are in for a shock, but we must make them occupy it—we must make them pay for it. And to do that we must keep troops there, to tempt them in,” Martellus said relentlessly.
“Who commands this forlorn hope?” an officer asked.
“Young Corfe, my aide, the one who was at Aekir. Andruw will have his hands full directing the remaining artillery. The rest of the skeleton garrison is under Corfe.”
“Let us hope he will not turn tail like he did at Aekir,” someone muttered.
Martellus’ eyes turned that pale, inhuman shade which always silenced his subordinates.
“He will do his duty.”
J AN Baffarin, the chief engineer, came scuttling like a crab through the low-ceilinged bomb-proof towards Corfe and Andruw.
“We’ve repaired the powder lines. There should be no problem now.”
He was shouting without realizing it, as they all had been for the past day and night. The huge tumult of the bombardment overhead had ceased to seem unusual and was now part of the accepted order of things.
The bomb-proof was large, low and massively buttressed. Five hundred men crouched within it as the shell and shot rained down on the fortress above their heads. Dust and fragments of loose stone came drifting down when there was a particularly close hit, and the air seemed to shake and shimmer in the light of the shuddering oil lamps. “The Catacombs” the troops had wryly labelled their shelter, and it seemed apt. All around the bodies of men sprawled and lolled, some asleep despite the unending noise and vibration. They looked like the aftermath of the plague, a scene from some febrile nightmare.
Corfe roused himself from the concussed stupor he had been in.
“What of the guns?”
“The casemates are intact, but Saint’s love, those are the heaviest calibre shells I’ve ever seen. The gatehouse is a pile of rubble, and the walls are in pieces. They don’t have to attack. If they keep this up they’ll reduce Ormann Dyke to powder without ever setting foot in it.”
Andruw shook his head. “They can’t have the ammunition and powder, not with their supply line as long as it is. I’ll wager a good bottle of Candelarian that they’re running low right now. This bombardment is for show as much as anything else. They want to stun us into surrender, perhaps.”
A particularly close explosion made them wince and duck instinctively. The granite ceiling seemed to groan under the assault.
“Some show,” Baffarin said dubiously.
“Your men know the drill,” Corfe said. “As soon as the rearguard is across the bridge you touch off the charges, both on the bridge itself and in the barbican. We’ll send the whole damn lot of them flying into the Thurians. There’s a show for you.”
The engineer chuckled.
The bombardment stopped.
There were a few tardy detonations from late-falling shells, and then a silence came down which was so profound that Corfe was alarmed, for a second believing that he had gone deaf. Someone coughed, and the noise seemed abnormally loud in the sudden stillness. The sleeping men began rousing themselves, staring around and shaking each other.
“On your feet!” Corfe shouted. “Gunners to your pieces, arquebusiers to your stations. They’re on their way, lads!”
The catacombs dissolved into a shadowy chaos of moving men. Baffarin grasped Corfe’s arm.
“See you on the other side of the river,” he said, and then was gone.
T HE devastation was awe-inspiring. The eastern barbican was like a castle of sand which had been undermined by the tide. There were yawning gaps in the walls, mounds of stone and rubble everywhere, burning timber crackling and shimmering in the dust-laden air. Corfe’s meagre command fanned out to their prearranged positions whilst Andruw’s gunners began wheeling the surviving culverins into firing positions.
Corfe clambered up the ruin of the gatehouse and surveyed the Merduk dispositions. Their batteries were smoke-shrouded, though a cold breeze from the north was shredding the powder fog moment by moment. He glimpsed great bodies of men on the move, elephants, regiments of horsemen and lumbering, heavy-laden waggons. The hills were crawling with orderly and disorderly movement.
A gun went off, as flat as a hand-clap after the thunder of the heavy-calibre cannons, and a sort of shudder went through the columns behind the smoke. They began to move, and soon it was possible to make out three armies marching towards the line of the river. One was aimed at the ruin of the barbican, the other two to the north and south, their goal apparently the Searil River itself. They were oddly burdened, and waggons rolled along in their midst, hauled by elephants.
The five hundred Torunnans who were the barbican’s last defenders spread out along the tattered battlements, their arquebuses levelled. Their orders were to make a demonstration, to draw as many of the enemy as possible into the fortifications and then withdraw slowly, finally escaping over the Searil bridge. It would be a difficult thing to control, this fighting retreat. Corfe felt no fear at the thought of the coming assault or the possibility of injury and death, but he was mortally afraid of making a hash of things. These five hundred were his command, his first since the fall of Aekir; and he knew he was still regarded by many of his fellow Torunnans as the man who had deserted John Mogen. He was coldly determined to do well today.
The warmth of the sun was bright and welcome. Men wriggled fingers in their ears to let out the ringing aftermath of the artillery, then sighted down their weapons at the advancing enemy.
“Easy!” Corfe called out. “Wait till I give the word.”
A gun barked from one of the upper casemates, and a second later a blossom of blasted earth appeared on the slope before the Merduk formations. Andruw testing the range.
They came on at a slow walk, the high-sided waggons trundling in their midst. The northern and southern hosts had more of these elephant-drawn vehicles than the one which was aimed at the barbican. Corfe strained his eyes to make out the strange loads, then whistled.
“Boats!” The waggons were loaded with shallow-hulled, puntlike craft piled one on top of the other. They were going to try and cross the Searil to north and south whilst engaging the garrison on the east bank at the same time.
“They’ll be lucky,” a nearby soldier said, and spat over the battered wall. “The Searil’s swollen after the rain. It’s running along like a bolting horse. I hope they have strong arms, or they’ll be washed all the way down to the Kardian.”
There was a spatter of brief laughter along the ramparts.
Andruw’s guns began to sing out one by one. The young gunnery officer had kept his five most accurate pieces this side of the river, and was adjusting their traverse and elevation personally. They began to lob explosive shells into the forefront of the central enemy formation, blasting them into red ruin. Corfe saw an elephant lifted half off its feet as a shell exploded squarely under it. Another hit one of the high-laden wains and sent slivers of deadly wood spraying like spears through its escort. There was confusion, men milling about, panic-stricken beasts trampling and trumpeting madly. The Torunnans watched with a high sense of glee, happy to be repaying the Merduks in kind for the relentless bombardment of the past days.
But the ranks reformed, and the Merduks came on again faster, loping along at a brisk trot, leaving the waggons behind. Corfe could see that the lead elements of these men were in shining half-armour and mail. They were the
The formation splintered and spread out so that the shellbursts took a lesser toll. As they jogged ever closer Corfe rapped out orders, pitching his voice to carry over the rippling booms of the Torunnan artillery.
