Krozair of Kregen (20 page)

When I looked up to the walls again, Irwin had gone.

After that we split the paktuns up, as I should have done in the first instance, and set them with men we knew to be loyal, so that thereafter we had no further trouble from the mercenaries.

The interesting fact was that all the diffs among the paktuns had elected to go with Starkey, the ex-king Zenno. They were as well aware as anyone else of the dislike for diffs of the apims of Zairia. Among the Grodnims who had scaled the wall in treachery there had been a goodly number of diffs. It had been a Chulik who had taken Deldar Nalgre’s arm off and broken up his insides as he fell. I saw an omen in this, something very obvious, really. The Savanti, those awesomely mysterious supermen of Aphrasöe, the Swinging City, had sent one of their agents, a Savapim, to assist in the vital moment when the city might have fallen. I knew this Irwin would moments before he landed here in Zandikar have been in Aphrasöe, being briefed for his mission. The Savanti had sent a Savapim to protect apims from diffs in a tavern brawl in Ruathytu. They must be taking like hands in many places of Kregen. I decided then that the Savanti were definitely fighting on the side of Zairia against Grodnim. This cheered me.

Our preparations continued. As I worked and checked and issued orders so I kept a lookout for Irwin, and sent messengers to find him. They returned empty-handed. I fancied he’d been whisked back to Aphrasöe — wherever the Swinging City was — his mission accomplished.

I could have used a regiment of Savapims just then.

Any fighting lord could use Savapims at any time.

That night we had the inner wall, built in a square against the weakened outer main wall, up to head height.

“We must build high enough so the cramphs of sectrixmen cannot jump the wall,” I said. “All night we go on. Use wood for the walkways. Tell the archers to get some rest. They will be vital on the morrow.” My orders were obeyed.

I made a point of asking Miam, who was now Queen Miam and a trifle dazed by events, to dress in her finest and to ride a milk-white sectrix — an unusual beast, an albino and somewhat weak — around the fortifications with me. She made a superb impression on the minds of all who saw her and the rolling thunders of the acclamations followed wherever she rode.

I told my son Vax to go always with her, as her protector and my liaison with her. He was not loath. I liked, more than I had expected I would, his devotion to his brother Zeg. Most young men in a like situation would have tried a little pelft on their own behalf — or almost most. But Vax, I saw with pleasure, had imbibed notions of honor from somewhere, as well as from his mother Delia. They had not come from me. The Krzy had most probably done a thorough job on him before my Apushniad had driven him away in shame from their august ranks.

When the lambent blue spark of Soothe appeared in the sky and the stars twinkled out to follow, we began to take down the outer wall. The job had to be done with exquisite care, so that nothing showed from the outside. We carried the blocks of stone and raised our new inner wall with them. The inside of the main wall was eaten away, leaving a mere shell. Zandikar, as I have indicated, was just the same luxury-loving, indolent, careless city as most any other of Zairia. Her people had built a good strong wall around the city and then had knocked off to sing and dance and quaff wine. Well, if Zandikar had been my city I’d have had three walls, at the least, knowing the damned Grodnims as I did.

Sanurkazz boasts seven walls in places.

The Twins rose and by their light we labored on.

Vax, rubbing his eyes, found me bellowing in a whisper, a most fearsome way of putting hell into a workman, on the inner wall. “Dak,” he said. “The queen would like to talk to you.”

“That’s the style, Naghan,” I said to the naked workman who was guiding a new block into place, whip in hand, directing the line of sweating naked slaves. “You’re building well.”

Then I went with Vax to the Palace of Fragrant Incense to crave an audience with the new queen. I put it like that, for the whole affair smacked of the grotesque to me, so conscious of the ravening leems of Grodnims beyond the walls. She received me in all dignity, superbly clad, wearing a crown, the torches smoking down, lighting in flickers of orange fire the gems and the gold and silver, the feathers and silks. Yet she looked imposing and grand in an altogether human way. I could not smile at her; but I did not, at the least, frown overmuch.

She did not waste time on preamble.

“On the morrow we beat the accursed Grodnims. I am the queen of Zandikar. I shall stand on the wall so that all my people may see me.”

“And get a quarrel through your pretty head.”

She flushed. “If Zair so ordains—”

“Zair would ordain nothing so foolish. Anyway, I forbid it.”

“You! I am the queen!”

“You are the queen. You have responsibilities. If you are slain, and slain so stupidly, what will happen to the loyalties of your people? Could you care for them then? And what of my — what of this man Zeg you prate of? Is he 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.

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 stop myself from going down among the archers of Zandikar and showing them what a Lohvian longbow might do in the hands of a skilled archer.

The cruel walled funnel is a bitter trick. The riders rode boldly through and charged on, yelling, and so the farther they galloped the more compressed became their ranks. Confusion set in; they recoiled and men toppled from the high saddles; they shrieked now as the arrow storm sleeted upon them. The bow of Zandikar may be only puny compared to a longbow; but it could wreak havoc in these conditions where the shafts sped so thickly that the air appeared filled with their whispering death.

Sectrixes screamed and thrashed their six hooves. Men fell, to be battered to death. The arrows never ceased their spiteful singing. A handful of mail-clad riders reached the far wall and I leaped up, placing the longbow down carefully first, and so went at them on a level with the Ghittawrer blade. It was all pulsing and high excitement for a space; we beat down those who had survived to reach the end of the funnel. They died unable to fall, so great was the crush. Men in the gate towers shot into the riders from above, and great stones fell upon them.