Vax’s brother or not? Would you spite him?”
Her face blazed scarlet in the torchlight. She fumbled with the golden mortil-crowned staff, the emblem of Zandikar.
“You speak boldly, my lord.”
“You call me jernu. I am Dak.”
Nath Zavarin, sweating and panting as usual, coughed and said, “It would be meet for the queen, whose name be revered, to witness the fight from afar. But in a place where her loyal warriors may easily see her and be heartened thereby.”
“Find such a place out of arrow range,” I said. “And I agree. But not otherwise.”
Vax scowled at me.
I said to him, straight, “If the queen is slain, what do you say to Zeg?”
He did not answer, but the hilt of the Krozair longsword went down under his fist and the scabbarded blade licked up, most evilly.
Then it was the turn of Roz Janri to be dissuaded from putting himself in the forefront of the fight. I had to be brisk; but I think he understood. I gave him the task, which he accepted, of bringing up our cavalry at the decisive moment. I did not tell him I devoutly wanted the thing done before our sectrixmen became involved. The poor beasts were very tottery on their legs, and a lot had been eaten so that our chivalry was weak.
In the crowd waiting in the High Hall it was easy enough to pick out Dolan. I said to him, “Dolan the Bow. Will you pick me out a bow — a good one — and a couple of quivers? I think I will join you at the breastworks tomorrow. I have not shot of late. I need practice.”
“Right gladly, Dak.”
He was as good as his word and produced a good specimen of a Zandikarese bow. I know Seg Segutorio would have smiled quietly had he seen it, for it was a puny thing compared to the great Lohvian longbow. But to my misfortune we had not a single one of the Kregen-famous Bowmen of Loh in our ranks. There was a small corps of the redheaded archers from Loh with Glycas. I gave orders about them, not caring overmuch for what we would have to do to them. The main missile strength of the Grodnims lay in their sextets of crossbowmen, working to the system I had devised so long ago in the warrens of Magdag for my old vosk-skulls.
Many imponderables must weigh down one side or the other of the balances; success or failure would be a composite of many disparate events. We did all we could to weigh down our balance pan to success and then, after that, it would be up to Oxkalin the Blind Spirit. The vacuum in the higher commands left by the evanishment of the paktuns meant that my own men could be employed, and there were many good men of Zandikar. Zena Iztar had aided us then; in the siege and more particularly in this coming fight we were on our own. Unless the Savanti decided to send more Savapims, of course.
It seems scarcely necessary to mention that all day the incoming hails of warning went up. The boys on the ramparts would beat their gongs and the yells of “Incoming” would shriek out and we’d all either duck or stand stoically until the spinning chunk of rock had found a billet inside the walls. The Grodnims used catapults for this general mayhem; they had gigantic varters designed as wall-smashers lined up against the point of the breach. The catapult throws with a high trajectory; the varter with its ballista-like action hurls with a low trajectory. Glycas had at least six fine engines, not as sophisticated as the gros-varters of Vallia; but big. They played on the point that both Glycas and I had selected as the point d’appui, and very early in the morning the first stones tumbled free and the evident cracks, visible from outside, widened to let daylight through.
A great cry went up from the assembled Greens.
We let them have an answering cheer.
To an impartial observer the decisive moment would clearly be seen to be at hand. As the suns shone down and the varters clanged, huge chunks of rock smote into the wall. Stones chipped into dust and fractured and fell. The parapet vanished. The wall slumped as rock after rock smashed in. Fountains of rock chips burst upward, the dust made men cough, the noise clanged on and on. During the morning two feint attacks were made and disposed of. By midday Glycas had moved all his wall-smashing artillery to this decisive point. From the vantage point of a tower I could see the solid square of his infantry paraded, ready to deal with any sortie we might make. His cavalry waited in long glittering lines. The mercenaries seethed in clumps of never-ending movement. And still the wall was bitten away. Our work from the inside brought all down with a run as the suns began their decline. We would have a long afternoon.
So thorough was the work and so sudden the final collapse that the way was just practicable for sectrixes. But, like a sensible commander, Glycas sent in his mercenaries first. Howling and shrieking, waving their weapons, they poured forward in a living tide of destruction. At least, they no doubt assumed themselves to be a living tide of destruction. We Zandikarese archers looked forward with calm confidence to the ebbing of the tide.
Breaking down the walls of fortresses usually takes time and patience with the battering engines. Glycas had picked this weak spot and now he saw victory opening before his eyes, all in a day. The trumpets of Grodno pealed triumphantly above the charging masses as they clambered the low breach and flung themselves forward into Zandikar.
The lethal horizontal sleeting death awaited them.
They pitched to the dust in droves. The high triumphant yells turned in an instant to shrieks of agony. Remorselessly the shafts drove in. More and more men clambered up only to jump down to death. When they stopped coming we clambered up in our turn, and jeered and taunted the massive ranks of the Magdaggian army poised beyond artillery range, and yet still and not moving. The cavalry made one or two feint advances, and then retired. The varters took up their bashing work and the catapults began to sing.
Within that square of stone the ground ran red. A shambles in very truth we had created. Now was a time for clearing up and rebuilding the wall more strongly. The resistance to the Green attack had been decisive, without the desperate touch-and-go incoherence of the previous assaults, and it marked a new stage in the siege operations.
That was the end of the beginning of the Siege of Zandikar.
Chapter Sixteen
I do not wish to dwell overlong on the Siege of Zandikar. From that day of the slaughter of the mercenaries in our trap it was a constant round of repelling assaults, of building walls, of keeping awake, of siting varters and catapults in advantageous positions, of keeping alert, of making the rounds, of maintaining morale, and of building walls and building more walls.
Twice more we caught the damned overlords of Magdag in the same trap. The second occasion was noteworthy, for we used a gateway, the gateway on the east of the city called the Gate of Happy Absolution. Instead of building a square of stone walls within the gate, we built a wedge shape, a triangle of death. One of the paktuns whom I felt I could trust repeated the exploit of his compatriot and betrayed us to Prince Glycas. He must have spoken eloquently for he returned with a bag of golden oars and news that all would go as planned.
So the shooting intensified around the Gate of Happy Absolution, and then as the return shots came in, slackened and died away. We began a great shout within the battlemented towers of the gate, shrieking for: “Shafts! Shafts! In the name of Zair bring up arrows!”
From a rearward tower I watched. This time Queen Miam stood to watch with me, and Vax hovered nearby. We saw the mailed chivalry of Magdag trampling up, proud in their power. They formed before the gate as infantry ran in with hide-covered rams and smashed in the gate. We had removed the good stout bars and replaced them with old beams that were artfully sawed and cut so as to break with a satisfyingly genuine rending of wood. The gates flew open. The siege-batterers leaped clear and, heads down, swords pointed, the overlords of Magdag charged in through the gateway. We repeated the previous two performances, and this time we drove our shafts with such an unholy joy that the hated overlords themselves felt each biting head.
After the second trap we had discovered the bodies of several Bowmen of Loh scattered on the rubble where they had been shot attempting to shoot in the attack. So I had a great Lohvian longbow to my hand. I could not
