Farlander (6 page)

It was General Creed himself who had ordered the gates to be opened the next morning. The refugees flooded in bearing stories of slaughter, of whole communities put to the torch for their defiance against the invaders.

Even confronted with such alarming accounts, most in Bar-Khos considered themselves beyond harm. The great Shield would protect them. Besides, the Mannians would be busy enough with the newly conquered south.

Bahn and Marlee carried on with their lives as best they could. She was expecting again, and therefore taking it easy, cautious of risking another miscarriage. She drank infusions of herbs the midwife gave her and would sit for hours watching the busy street below, a hand splayed protectively over her belly. Sometimes her father would visit, still clad in his reeking armour, a giant of a man, his face hard, without flex, squinting at her with eyes dimmed by age. His daughter was precious to him, and he and Bahn would fuss over her until she finally snapped and lost her temper. Even that did not dissuade them for long.

Four months later, news came of an advancing imperial army. The mood in the city remained much the same. There were six walls after all, tall and thick enough to protect them. All the same, another call went out from the city council asking for volunteers to fill the ranks of the Red Guard, which had thinned considerably during the previous decades of peace. Bahn was hardly cut out to be a soldier, but he was a romantic at heart and, with a wife and child and a home to protect, in his own way he was stirred to action. He quit his job without fuss, simply not turning up one morning – a warm thrill in his belly on thinking of the foreman having a tantrum at his absence. That same day Bahn signed up to defend his city. At the central barracks, they handed him an old sword with a chipped blade, a red cloak of damp-smelling wool, a round shield, a cuirass, a pair of greaves and a helm all much too large for him . . . and a single silver coin. He was then told to report every morning to the Stadium of Arms for training.

Bahn had barely learned the names of the other recruits in his company, all still as green and untrained as he was, when the Mannian herald arrived on horseback to demand the city’s surrender. Their terms were simple enough. Open the gates and most would be spared; but fight and all would be slain or enslaved. It was impossible, the herald announced to the high wall looming before him, to resist the manifest destiny of Holy Mann.

A trigger-happy marksman on the ramparts shot the herald off his mount. A cry rose up from the battlements: first blood.

The city held its breath, waiting for what was to come next.

At first their numbers seemed impossible. For five days the Imperial Fourth Army assembled across the width of the Lansway, tens of thousands stamping into position in an ordered procession, then spreading out to erect their colony of tents, earthworks, guns in numbers never seen before, mammoth siege towers – all before the collective gaze of the defenders.

Their barrage finally began with a single screeching whistle. Cannon shots pounded into the wall; one arched high and landed in a shattering explosion among the reserves of men behind. The defenders on the parapet hunkered down and waited.

On the morning of the first ground assault, Bahn was standing with some other raw recruits behind the main gates of wall one, the heavy shield hanging from his arm, a sword in his trembling hand. He had not slept. All night the Mannian missiles had crashed down around them, and horns like wild banshees had sounded from the imperial lines, fraying his nerves to tatters. Now in the early dawn he could think of only one thing: his wife Marlee at home with her unborn child, worried sick over both her husband and her father.

The Mannians came like a wave cresting over cliffs. With ladders and siege towers they attacked the ramparts in a single crashing line; Bahn, from below, watched in awe as white-armoured men launched themselves over the battlements at the Red Guard defenders, their battle cries like nothing he had ever heard before, shrill ululations that seemed barely plausible from human throats. He had already heard how the enemy ingested narcotics before battle, primarily to dispel their fears; and indeed they fought in a frenzy, without any regard for their own lives. Their ferocity stunned the Khosian defenders. The lines buckled, almost broke.

It was butchery, murderous and simple. Men slipped and pitched headlong from the heights. Blood flowed from the parapet gutters like the run-offs of a crimson rain so that soldiers had to run from underneath them with shields held over their heads. His father-in-law was up there somewhere, in amongst the grunts and hollers of collision. Bahn did not see him fall.

In truth, Bahn failed to use his sword even once that day. He did not even come face to face with the enemy.

He stood shoulder to shoulder with the other men of his company, most of them strangers to him still, every face that he saw a stark white, drained of spirit. The din of the battle robbed him of breath; he felt a sickness take hold of his body, like a dizzying sense of freefall. Bahn held his sword in front of him like a stick. It may as well have been a stick, for all he knew how to use it.

Someone’s bowels had loosened nearby. The ensuing stench hardly inspired courage in the other men; it inspired only an urge to run, to be away from there. The recruits trembled like colts wanting to bolt from a stable fire.

Bahn did not know what it was that breached the gates in the end. One instant they were there before them, massive and stout, seemingly impregnable. Rall the baker was jabbering by his side, something about his helm and shield being his own, how he had bought them from the bazaar, a jumble of words that Bahn could barely hear. The next instant, Bahn was sprawled on his back, gasping for air, his mind stunned to numbness, a high-pitched ringing in his ears as he tried to remember who he was, what he was supposed to be doing here, why he was staring at a milky blue sky obscured with rolling clouds of dust.

As he lifted his head, grit pattered down all around him. Old Rall the baker was shouting in his face, eyes and mouth open wider than they had any normal right to be. The man was holding up the stump of his arm, the hand still dangling from a narrow length of tendon. Blood jetted in an arc that caught the slanting sunlight, becoming almost pretty in that moment. Pain descended on Bahn then. It stung the torn flesh of his cheeks, and at once he could feel the explosion of breath from Rall’s screaming against his face, though he still could not hear him. He looked over to the gates, between the legs of men still on their feet, and found himself staring over a carpet of raw meat, of gristle, with hideous movement in amongst it. The gates were gone. In their place stood an unfurling curtain of dark smoke, parting here and there where white figures slipped through, howling as they came.

Somehow, he staggered to his feet as survivors from his company ran forward to fill the breach. That seemed like madness to Bahn: farmers and stall-keepers in ill-fitting armour rushing straight at killers intent on hacking them down. His eyes burned with what he saw: the impetus, the nerve of those men, when all about them their comrades lay exposed to the sky, or stumbled about, unhinged from their senses, jostling to get away. It roused something within Bahn. He thought of the sword in his hand, and of running to help those fellows, too few of them trying to stop the tide.

But, no, he no longer held his sword. He looked about for it, frantic, and saw old Rall again, on his knees, screaming up at him.

What does he want of me?
Bahn had thought wildly.
Does he expect me to fix his hand?

At the gates themselves, the defenders were being cut down like wheat. They were inexperienced recruits. And the Mannians were not. Somewhere behind Bahn, a sergeant yelled for the men to stand firm, spittle flying from his mouth as he shoved at their backs and tried to form them into a line. No one was listening to him, and those around Bahn were pushing against him, cursing, crying out, wanting only to flee.

He knew it was hopeless then; besides, he couldn’t find his sword. There were other blades lying amongst the debris, but not one with the right number on the hilt – and it was vital to him, for some reason just then, to find the right one. Perhaps if he had done so he would have died that day. Instead, in those scattered moments he spent searching in vain, the urge to fight drained out of him. Instead, he wanted more than anything else to see Marlee again. To see their child when it was born. To live.

Bahn grabbed old Rall and hauled him clumsily over his shoulder. His knees buckled; but fear loaned him extra strength. With the rest of the panicking men, he allowed himself to be jostled back towards the gates of wall two, faces glancing back over shoulders, over Bahn’s shoulders, no talk or shouting from them now, simply wordless panting. Even Rall stopped yelling and began thanking him, would not stop thanking him. His words emerged jerkily to the bounce of Bahn’s footfalls.

It was a full rout, as hundreds of men raced back across the killing ground, casting their weapons and shields aside as they went. The distance was several throws to reach the safety of wall two. The old baker grew heavier on his back, so that Bahn’s stride unevitably slackened and he fell behind the main mass of escapees. Rall shouted for him to move faster, warning that the enemy were close behind. Bahn hardly needed telling. He could hear the Mannians baying in hot pursuit.

They were the last to get through, just before the gates were slammed shut and sealed. Less fortunate men remained trapped on the other side. They pounded for the gates to be opened. They shouted of how they had wives and children at home. They cursed and pleaded. The gates stayed closed.

Bahn lay in a heap and listened to the shouting on the other side, more grateful than anything else in his whole life that it was not him still out there.

He had closed his eyes, overwhelmed. For a long time, lying facedown in the dirt, he had wept.

Now a gust of wind swept across the Mount of Truth, warm and humid. Bahn exhaled a breath of stale air and returned his attention to the hill and the summer’s sunlight, and his son staring down at the walls.

‘Drink?’ asked Marlee, as she handed her husband a jug of cider, her motions slow and careful so as not to wake the child on her back. Bahn’s mouth was parched. He took a drink, held a mouthful of the sweet liquid before swallowing. He then followed his son’s gaze.

Even now, as he and the boy silently watched, an occasional missile struck or rebounded off the still intact outermost rampart facing the imperial army. A giant glacis of earth fronted the entire wall now, deflecting or absorbing such shots – one of the inspired innovations that had allowed them to draw out the Mannian siege for this long. Still, this rampart was sagging in places, and the battlements behind it gaped like toothless mouths where sections of stone and crenellations had fallen. Along these ragged defences, an almost imperceptible line of red-cloaked soldiers huddled behind the surviving cover; amongst them, crews operated squat ballistae and cannon, constantly firing back at the Mannian lines.

Behind the other three inner walls, more heavily garrisoned in comparison, cranes and labourers could be seen erecting yet another one. So far, four walls had fallen to the never-ending barrage of the enemy – at a staggering material expense to the Mannians. In response, the defenders had succeeded in building two new ones to replace them, but they could not hope to erect ramparts indefinitely. The latest construction lay close to the straight channel of the canal which cut across the Lansway to connect the two bays. Not far beyond this canal, the Lansway ended at the Mount of Truth, and beyond that sprawled the city itself. It was clear they were running out of room.

Bahn’s son was peering down at the wall currently under fire. Along its battlements, between the cannon, ballistae, and the occasional long-rifle firing in reply, men laboured with cranes as they raised great scoops of earth and rock. Some kept dropping out of sight as they were lowered on ropes over the far side, while others merely tipped the contents of the cranes’ scoops over the outer rim. Even as they watched, a group of men pulling on ropes collapsed amidst a cloud of flying debris.

Juno gasped.

‘Look there,’ said Bahn, quickly drawing his son’s attention away from the sight, and instead pointed out various structures dotted around the prospective killing grounds between the walls. They looked like towers, though they were open on all sides and not very tall. ‘Mine shafts,’ he explained. ‘The Specials are fighting every hour down there, trying to stop the walls from being undermined.’

At last Juno looked down at his seated father.

‘It’s different, from what I was expecting,’ he said. ‘You fight there every day?’

‘Some days. Though there are few battles any more. Just this.’

His words appeared to impress the boy. Bahn swallowed, turning away from what he recognized as pride in his son’s eyes. Juno already knew that his grandfather had died defending the city. Even now he wore the old man’s short-sword about his waist; and, when they returned home, he would no doubt insist that his father give him further lessons in its use. The boy talked often of how he would follow in his father’s footsteps when he was old enough, but Bahn did not wish to encourage such ambitions. Better his son ran off to be a wandering monk, better even to sign up on a leaky merchanter, than stay here and fight to the inevitable end.

Juno seemed to read his mood. Softly, he asked, ‘How long can we hold them off?’

Bahn blinked, surprised. That was the question of a soldier, not a boy.