"Present your pieces!"

He raised his sabre. He could see individual faces in the ranks of the approaching enemy, horsehair plumes, panting mouths underneath the tall helms.

He swept his sabre down. "Give fire!"

The walls erupted in a line of smoke and flame as nigh on five hundred arquebuses went off in a single volley. The enemy, scarcely a hundred yards away, were thrown back as if by a sudden gale of wind.

The front ranks dissolved into a ma.s.s of wriggling, crawling men, and those behind faltered a moment, then came on again.

"Reload!" Corfe shouted. It was Andruw's turn now.

The five guns of the remaining Torunnan battery waited until the Merduks were within fifty yards, and then fired as one. They were loaded with deadly canister: hollow cans of thin metal containing thousands of arquebus bullets. Five jets of smoke spurted out, and the Merduks were flattened once more in a dreadful slaughter.

The smoke was too thick for aiming. Corfe shouted at the top of his voice, waving his sabre: "Back off the walls! Second position, lads! Back on me!"

The Torunnans ran down from the ruined battlements and formed a swift two-deep line below. Their sergeants and ensigns pushed them into position and then stood ready.

The gunners were leaving their pieces, having spiked the touch-holes. Corfe saw Andruw there, laughing as he ran. When the last artillerymen were behind the line of arquebusiers he gave the order.

"Ready your pieces!"

A line of figures pouring through the gaps in the walls now, hundreds of them, screaming as they came.

"Front rank, present your pieces!"

Thirty yards away. Could they be stopped? It seemed impossible.

"Give fire!"

A shattering volley that hid the enemy in clouds of dark smoke.

"First rank, fall back. Second rank, give fire!"

The first rank were running back through the fortress to the bridge, where Baffarin and his engineers waited. It would be very close.

The second volley staggered the smoke, flattened more of the oncoming enemy, but Corfe's men were falling now for the Merduks had arquebusiers up on the battlements firing blindly into the Torunnan ranks.A shrieking line of figures issued out of the powder cloud like friends catapulted out of h.e.l.l.

A few weapons were fired, a ragged volley. And then it was hand-to-hand down the line. The arquebusiers dropped their weapons and drew their sabres, if they had time. Others flailed about them with the b.u.t.ts of their firearms.

Corfe gutted a howling Merduk, swept the heavy sabre across the face of another, punched the spiked hilt into the jaw of a third.

"Fall back! Fall back to the bridge!"

They were being overwhelmed. The enemy was pouring in-thousands of them, perhaps. All across the rubble-strewn and pitted drill square Corfe saw his line dissolve into knots and groups of isolated men as the Merduks punched into it. Those who could were retreating; others went down under the flashing scimitars still swinging their weapons.

He clanged aside a scimitar, elbowed the man off-balance, thrust at another, then spun round at the first man and slashed open his arm. They were all around him. He whirled and hacked and thrust without conscious volition. The knot broke apart. There was s.p.a.ce again, a moving turmoil of figures running past, shouting; there was flashing murder every instant and so much blood it seemed some other element spilling everywhere.

Someone was pulling frantically at his arm. He swung round and almost decapitated Andruw. The gunner officer had a slash across his face which had left a flap of flesh hanging over one eye.

"Time to go, Corfe. We can't hold them any longer."

"How many at the bridge?"

"Enough. You've done your duty, so come. They're preparing to blow the charges."

Corfe allowed himself to be tugged away and followed Andruw's lead out of the fortress, calling the last of his men with him as he went.

The bridge was standing on a few stone supports. The rest had been chiselled and blasted away. Baffarin was there, grinning. "Glad to see you, Haptman. We thought you had got lost. You're among the last."

Corfe and Andruw ran across the long, empty bridge. The lead elements of the enemy were a scant fifty yards behind, and arquebus b.a.l.l.s were kicking up splinters of stone around their feet as they made the western bank. The survivors of Corfe's command were crouched there among the revetments of the island. Those who still possessed their firearms were firing methodically into the press of the advancing enemy. As they saw Corfe and Andruw a hoa.r.s.e cheer went up.

Baffarin's engineers were touching off ribbons of bound rags with slow-match. A culverin was firing canister across the bridge, stalling the Merduk advance. Corfe sank to his knees in the shelter of the earthworks behind the bridge, chest heaving. He felt as though someone had lit a fire inside his armour and the black metal seemed insufferably heavy, though when running he had not even noticed its weight.

"Only a few seconds now," Baffarin said. He was still grinning, but there was no humour on his face; it was like a rictus. Sweat carved runnels down his black temples.

Then the charges went off.

Not a noise, just a flash, an immense . . . impression. A sense of a huge happening that the brain couldnot quite grasp. Corfe felt the air sucked out of his lungs. He shut his eyes and buried his face in his arms, but he heard the secondary explosions distantly, as though he were separated from them by thick gla.s.s.

Then there was the rain of rubble and wood and more terrible things falling all around him. Something heavy clanged off his backplate. Something else hit his hand as it gripped the back of his head, hard enough to numb. Rolling concussions, a swift-moving thunder. Water raining, men moaning. The echoes of the detonations reverberated off the face of the hills, faceted thunder, at last dwindling.

Corfe looked up. The bridge was gone, and the very earth seemed changed. Of the eastern barbican, that great, high-walled fortress, there was little left. Only stumps and mounds of smoking stone amid a huge series of craters. The catacombs laid bare to the sky. Fire flickering-the smell of powder and blood and broken soil, a reek heavier and more solid than any he had ever experienced before, even at Aekir.

"Holy G.o.d!" Andruw said beside him.

The slopes leading down to the site of the barbican were black with men, some alive and cowering, others turned into corpses. It was as if they had simultaneously experienced a vision, witnessed an apparition of their prophet, perhaps. The carca.s.ses of elephants lay like outcrops of grey rock, except where they had been mutilated into something else. The entire battlefield seemed frozen in shock.

"I'll bet they heard that in Torunn," Baffarin said, the end of the slow-match still gripped in an ivory-knuckled hand.

"I'll bet they heard it in f.u.c.king Hebrion," a nearby trooper said, and there were automatic chuckles, empty humour. They were too shocked.

The air clicked in Corfe's throat. He found his voice, and surprised himself with its steadiness.

"Who have we got here? Tove, Ma.r.s.en, good. Get the men spread out along the earthworks. I want weapons primed. Ridal, get you to the citadel and report to Martellus. Tell him-tell him the eastern barbican and bridge are blown-"

"In case he hadn't noticed," someone put in.

"-And tell him I have some . . ." He glanced around. Sweet Saints in heaven! So few? "I have some tenscore men at my disposal."

The survivors of Corfe's first command busied themselves carrying out his orders.

"They're fighting along the river," someone said, standing and peering to the north. The boom of artillery and crackle of arquebus fire had shattered the momentary silence.

"That's their fight. We've a job to do here," Corfe said harshly. Then he sat down quickly with his back to a revetment, lest his rubber legs turn traitor and buckle under him.

M ARTELLUS watched the climax of the battle from his usual vantage point on the heights of the citadel.

Not for him the hurly-burly of trying to command his men from the thick of things. John Mogen had been the man for that. No, he liked to stand back and study the layout of the developing conflict, base his decisions on logic and the dispatches that he received minute by minute, borne by grimed and b.l.o.o.d.y couriers. A general could direct things best from afar, distanced from the shouting turmoil of his battle.

Some men, it was true, could command an army whilst fighting almost in the front rank, but they were rare geniuses. Inevitably Mogen came to mind again.

The roar of the explosion was a distant echo of thunder rolling back and forth between hills ever furtheraway. A huge plume of smoke rose up from the centre of the battlefield where the eastern barbican had once been. The a.s.sault had been blunted there, perhaps even crippled. Young Corfe had done a good job. He was someone to watch, despite the cloud hanging over his past.

But to north and south of the smoke two fresh Merduk formations, each perhaps twenty-five thousand strong, had closed on the river. The artillery on the Long Walls and the island had peppered their ranks unceasingly with sh.e.l.ls, but they came on regardless. Now they were unloading the flat puntlike boats from the elephant wains and preparing to brave the foaming current of the swollen Searil River.

Once they cross the river in force, Martellus thought, it is only a matter of time. We may destroy them in their thousands as they cross the d.y.k.e, but cross it they will. The river is our best defence, at least while it is running this full.

He turned to an aide.

"Is Ranafast standing ready with the sortie force?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then go to him. Give him my compliments and tell him he is to take his command out to the island at once. He can also strip the walls of every fourth man except for gunners, and all are to be arquebus-armed. He is to contest the crossing of the river. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

A scribe nearby had been scrawling furiously. The written order was entrusted to the aide after Martellus had flashed his signature across it, and then the aide was gone, running down to the Long Walls.

There was not much time for Ranafast to scratch together his command and get into position. Martellus cursed himself. Why had he never envisaged a ma.s.s boat crossing? They had been busy, the Merduk engineers, in the weeks they had been stalled at Aekir.

The first of the boats were already being shoved down the eastern bank and into the water. They were ma.s.sive, crude affairs, propelled by the paddles of their pa.s.sengers. Fourscore men at least manned each one, and Martellus counted over a hundred of them lining the eastern bank like southern river lizards basking in a tropical sun. Sh.e.l.lbursts were sprouting up in their midst like momentary fungi, shattering boats, sending men flying, panicking the elephants.

The Searil was three hundred yards across at the d.y.k.e, a wide brown river that was churning wild and white in many places and was thick with debris from its headwaters. No easy task to paddle across it at the best of times. To do it under sh.e.l.lfire, though . . . These men excited Martellus' admiration even as he plotted their destruction.

The first wave was setting out. To north and south of the ruined bridge the Searil suddenly became thick with the large, flat boats, like a stream clogged with autumn leaves near its banks.

A thunder of hooves, and Ranafast was leading his hors.e.m.e.n-the vanguard of his command-across the d.y.k.e bridges to the island. A column of marching men followed on after the cavalry. With luck, there would be over seven thousand on the western bank to contest the crossing, supported by artillery from the walls.

And yet when he looked at the size, the teeming numbers, of those who clogged the eastern bank, Martellus could not help but feel despair. For miles the edge of the Searil was crawling with enemy soldiers, boats, elephants, horses and waggons. And that was only the a.s.saulting force. On the hillsbeyond the reserves, the cavalry, the artillery, the countless camp-followers darkened the face of the land like some vast blight. It was inconceivable that the collective will of such a mult.i.tude should be thwarted.

And yet he must do it-he would do it. He would defy the gloom-mongers and amateur generals and all the rest. He would hold this fortress to his last breath, and he would bleed the Merduk armies white upon it.

Globes of smoke, tiny with distance, appeared along the length of the walls. After a few seconds the boom of the cannon salvoes came drifting up to the citadel, and soon the guns of the citadel itself were firing. The noise was everywhere, together with the blood-quickening smell of gunpowder.

White fountains of exploding water began to burst amid the Merduk boats. Martellus could make out the men in the craft straining like maniacs at their paddles, but remaining in time. They had their heads bowed and shoulders hunched forward as though they were braving a heavy shower of rain. Martellus had seen the same position a.s.sumed by most men advancing against heavy fire; it was a kind of instinct.

One, two, then three of the boats were struck in quick succession as the Torunnan artillery began to range in on their targets. Martellus had the best gunners in the world here at the d.y.k.e, and now they were fulfilling his faith in them.

The men in the shattered boats sank out of sight at once, weighed down by armour. Even had they worn none, they had no chance in the rushing current.

Ranafast was deploying his men along the western bank whilst his own sh.e.l.ls whistled over his head. He had a couple of galloper-guns with him also. But the men were spread perilously thin, and Martellus could see now that the central Merduk column was staging an attack on Corfe's position, manhandling boats amid the debris of the bridge, all the time under heavy fire from Corfe's surviving command and the other defenders who were posted there. Ranafast should see the danger, though.

Sure enough, the cavalry commander brought his two light guns down to Corfe's position, and soon they were barking canister at close range into the Merduks trying to cross there. An ugly little fight, but the main struggle was still going on along the flanks.

The waterborne Merduks were in trouble. More boats were being struck by Torunnan sh.e.l.ls, and when these did not sink at once they began to roar downstream like sticks caught in a millrace, crashing into their fellows and sending them down-river in their turn. Soon there were scores of boats whirling and drifting in the middle of the river, wreckage and bodies bobbing up and down, the geysers of sh.e.l.lbursts exploding everywhere.

Some boats reached the western bank, only to receive a hail of arquebus bullets. Their complements straggled ash.o.r.e to be cut down by Ranafast's men. A tidemark of bodies built up there on the western bank while the Torunnans reloaded methodically and fired volley after volley into the wretches floundering ash.o.r.e.

The battle had quickly degenerated into a one-sided slaughter. Signal guns began to sound from the Merduk lines calling off the attack, and those on the eastern bank halted as they were about to push a fresh wave of craft into the water. The unfortunates already on the river tried to come about and retrace their course, but it was impossible in that maelstrom of shot, sh.e.l.l and white water. They perished almost to a man.

The a.s.sault ground to a b.l.o.o.d.y and fruitless halt. Some of the Merduks remained on the edge of the river to try and help those labouring in the water, but most began a sullen retreat to their camps on the hillsides above. And all the while, Torunnan artillery lobbed vindictive and jubilant sh.e.l.ls at their retreating backs.The attack had not just failed; it had been destroyed before it could even start.

"I want another battery of gallopers detached from the walls and sent to Corfe's position," Martellus said crisply. "Send him another three tercios also; he is closest to the enemy. He must hold the island."

An aide ran off with the order. Martellus' brother officers were laughing and grinning, scarcely able to believe their eyes.

For miles along the line of the river powder smoke hung in the air in thick clouds, and strewn along both banks was the wreck of an army. Men, boats, animals, weapons. It was awesome to behold. They dotted the land like the fallen fruit in an untended orchard, and the river itself was thick with boats half awash, a few figures clinging desperately to the wreckage. They were coursing downstream out of sight, helpless.

"He's lost ten thousand at least," old Isak was saying. "And some of his best troops, too. Sweet Saints, I've never seen carnage like it. He throws away his men as though they were chaff."

"He miscalculated," Martellus said. "Had the river been less full, he would have been at the d.y.k.e by now.

This attack was intended to see him to the very walls on which we stand. Its repulse will give him pause for thought, but let us not forget that he still has fifty thousand men on those hills who have not yet been under fire. He will try again."

"Then the same thing will happen again," Isak said stubbornly.

"Possibly. We have exhausted our surprises, I think. Now he knows what we have and will be searching his mind for openings, gaps in our defences."

"He cannot mean to a.s.sault again for a while, not after that debacle."

"Perhaps not, but do not underestimate Shahr Baraz. He was profligate with his men's lives at Aekir because of the prize that was at stake. I had thought he would be more careful here, if only because of the natural strength of the d.y.k.e. It may be that someone in higher authority is urging him on into less well-judged a.s.saults. But we cannot become overconfident. We must look to our flanks. After today he will be probing the upper and lower stretches of the Searil, looking for a crossing point."

"He won't find one. The Searil is running as fast as a riptide and apart from here, at the d.y.k.e, the banks are treacherous, mostly cliffs and gorges."

"We know that, but he does not." Martellus sagged suddenly. "I think we have won, for the moment.

There will be no more headlong a.s.saults. We have gained a breathing s.p.a.ce. It is now up to the kings of the world to aid us. The Saints know we deserve some help after the defence we have made."

"Young Corfe did well."

"Yes, he did. I intend to give him a larger command. He is able enough for it, and he and Andruw work well together."

A few desultory cannon shots spurted out from the Torunnan lines, but a calm was descending over the Searil valley. As though by common consent, the armies had broken off from each other. The Merduks rescued the pathetically few survivors of the river a.s.sault without further molestation and loaded them on carts to be driven back within the confines of the camps. A few abandoned boats burned merrily on the eastern bank. The guns fell silent.

T HE indaba of officers had broken up less than an hour before, and Shahr Baraz was alone in thedarkened tent. It was as spa.r.s.ely furnished as a monk's cell. There was a low wooden cot strewn with army blankets, a folding desk piled with papers, a chair and some stands for the lamps.

And one other thing. The old general set it on the desk and drew the curtain from around it. A small cage.

Something inside it chittered and flapped irritably.

"Well, Goleg," Shahr Baraz said in a low voice. He tapped the bars of the cage and regarded its occupant with weary disgust.

"Ha! Man's flesh is too tough for Goleg. Wants a child, a young, sweet thing just out of the cradle."

"Summon your master. I must make my report."

"I want sweet flesh!"