The City (18 page)

He looked around, gauging the battle. The enemy were still attacking from front and left. If they had circled Fell’s little army the Wildcats would all be dead by now. Either their commander was stupid, or they were short of soldiers themselves. Nothing he had seen in the last day or so indicated they were led by stupid men, and a small spark of hope ignited in his chest. They were undermanned too.

For one glorious, insane moment he considered ordering his troop to attack.

No, he thought. Defend, defend, defend. They had to try to save the wounded. But he needed to know the Blues’ strength. He ran to the nearest of the two boulders and leaped on to the top, but the rock was too flat to give him a view. He looked around. ‘Queza.’

‘Sir.’ She was a short stocky woman, well muscled but graceful, and agile as a monkey. And lighter than any man. She jogged over to him, eager for an order.

He turned to one of the northlanders, an iron wolf of a man, who was picking through a pile of swords, trying to find a good one. ‘You.’

‘Malachi,’ the man said flatly.

‘Queza, this soldier and I are going to lift you up. I need to know how many are coming against us.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Malachi climbed on the rock and stood beside him. Fell flexed one knee and patted his leg. ‘Thigh and shoulder.’

Queza swarmed up him, and he felt her balance on his shoulder shift as she put half her weight on Malachi. Her hand on his head slowly lifted as she stood up. He and Malachi held on to her lower legs.

The moments went by with painful slowness and he wondered how long it would take the enemy to notice such an open target. He heard a missile of some kind swish overhead, then Queza cried, ‘Let me down!’

She clambered down with less grace than she’d climbed up, but she was grinning from ear to ear.

‘A hundred, sir, hundred and twenty at best.’

‘Riders?’

‘Half a dozen horses in the rear. Messengers, I expect. No cavalry.’

Fell was grinning too. He nodded and clapped her on the shoulder and Queza ran back to her place. Let’s call it a hundred, he thought. We’ve got forty-five, with four unhurt. All we have to do is kill two more each and we’ll walk away from here.

NIGHT DESCENDED WITH
terrible slowness, and still the enemy came on.

Indaro stole a look to the west, where the sun had fallen in splendour, leaving a sky streaked in yellow and purple like an old bruise. Her body felt like that bruise, sore and aching all over. Her right shoulder was numb and her sword arm had all the strength and agility of a week-old piece of meat. She wondered how long she could keep on defending. The enemy were suffering too; her opponent was moving like a zombie, and their encounter was merely a dull exchange of blows, each weary beyond words.

Indaro had little time for prayer, but this day she prayed to the gods of ice and fire to intercede with Vashta, the guardian of night, to bring darkness soon. If they survived one more night, maybe reinforcements would come with the dawn. Maybe.

‘Daro!’ The word crept slowly into her tired brain. She moved back two steps to give herself space and glanced at the speaker. ‘We’re retreating to the rocks,’ Garret told her. He was covered in blood and looked ready to drop.

She nodded and gazed at her opponent, who had made no attempt to follow her, but just stood there, exhausted, his sword barely raised in defence. She summoned all her remembered strength and speed and darted forward to skewer him in the throat before backing away.

She had not heard the enemy order to retreat, but after a few
moments they started fading back into the darkness. She took a deep breath, then walked over to a wounded enemy soldier, lying twitching, his entrails piling in a bloody rope at his side. His eyes were open but unseeing as she stood over him. She slashed his throat, then wiped the blade on his leg. It was a good blade, she thought, the best she’d had in days.

She found the man’s water skin, and slung it on her shoulder before turning back to her colleagues, where the wounded were gathered between the rocks. The two flat boulders were a poor defence, but on that empty plain they were the only cover to be had. The most badly wounded lay in lines between them, and Fell had placed less seriously injured soldiers on the tops of the rocks to deter attacks from the flanks.

There were few without wounds now. She looked down at herself. She was covered with blood, but her only injury was grazed knuckles. She thought she should help with the wounded, but there were so many of them and she was so tired. She took a deep breath, then walked over to help.

Fell saw her and stepped towards her. His face was grey and his cheeks sunken; his blue eyes were dull. He gazed at her expressionlessly. ‘I’ll take that water,’ he grunted. Then, pointing at the rock where Doon lay, ‘See to your servant.’

She nodded and clambered up on to the flat boulder. Doon was sitting with six others, most with broken legs or ankles. She was splinting the leg of a friend of hers called Marchetta. It was a bad break and Marchetta had fainted. Indaro helped Doon quickly wrench the bones back in position, and bandage the leg to a broken sword blade. They both knew it would be impossible to walk on for several weeks, and would probably never heal, even if the enemy were suddenly to vanish away in the night.

When they had finished, Doon rolled over on one side to try to get comfortable, and Indaro saw her face tense as her wound pulled.

‘Let me see that,’ she said.

‘It’s all right. Leave it alone,’ the woman replied irritably, moving the leg away.

‘You don’t want to survive this, then die of gangrene.’

‘If it’s going bad, there’s nothing you can do. You just gave our clean water away.’

‘I’ve still got some salve left.’ Indaro groped in the pouch at her
side and came out with a small corked pot which had survived the flood.

Doon sneered. ’You’re the only person who thinks that stuff does any good. I think it’s poison.’

Indaro could not blame her. She’d bought the salve from an old woman in the southern frontier town of Saris, where they’d been camped for more than a year. She was told it was made of oak moss and willow bark, both rare plants in the hot dry southlands. She’d smeared the green stuff on many minor wounds, to some effect she’d thought. Then she used it to try to save the life of Maccus Odarin, a comrade and a great fighter for the Wildcats, who’d suffered a trivial leg injury which turned rotten. She’d used almost all of it, daily applying it to his wound as he grew sicker and the leg blackened. They had to cut the leg off in the end, and he died anyway. Since then no one else would touch the stuff and avoided it as if it were cursed.

‘All right. I won’t use it. Just let me see the wound. Remember you have to do as I say.’ Indaro managed to smile.

Reluctantly Doon let her unbandage the wound, which was deep and wide across the back of her left thigh near the buttock. Indaro could see slashed muscle, but the blade had missed major blood vessels. Nevertheless it had taken an age to stop bleeding and the previous night Indaro had feared it never would. It was still leaking blood and pale fluid. But, as far as Indaro could tell by the dying light, it looked clean.

Doon, who couldn’t see properly, twisting round, asked, ‘Well?’ There was fear in her eyes. There were many kinds of death, and none of them wanted Maccus Odarin’s.

‘It’s good,’ Indaro told her. ‘Better not let Fell Aron Lee see it. He’ll have you back on the front line tomorrow.’ She lay back on the warm stone, groaning with painful pleasure as her shoulder muscles started to ease. ‘How many are we left?’ she asked, knowing Doon would have been watching every sword blow, counting every fallen comrade.

‘Eighteen on their feet. I don’t know if anyone’s unwounded, except you. And Fell.’ She shrugged. Of course Fell was unhurt, she meant. He was invulnerable. In more than a hundred days of battle he had remained unhurt. He was charmed, they said.

Indaro looked down to where their commander was moving among his battered troops, squatting down to speak to each of the wounded.
She knew he would not be speaking of their courage, or of living to fight another day. It was not his way. Fell’s fighters knew they were the best. He did not need to tell them. No, Fell would be assessing each man or woman, judging if they would live or die, and if they would live, if they could fight again tomorrow.

He looked up and saw her watching him, and she thought she saw some emotion pass across his face. Then she realized she must be imagining it. She had never met anyone as guarded as Fell Aron Lee.

And besides, it was getting dark. She looked to the west, where the remaining light was an eerie greenish-grey. There were heavy layers of clouds in the sky, and she detected for the first time the slight chill of coming autumn in the air.

‘Look!’ Doon said. Indaro turned to look where she was pointing.

A figure was jogging towards the besieged camp out of the north. Indaro saw it was one of their own and called down, ‘Incoming scout.’

Fell stood and walked to meet the woman and the two had a brief discussion. Then he looked around him and said, ‘Listen.’ He had hardly raised his voice, but everyone heard him and silence fell on the camp. ‘They’ve pulled back to the river. With no moon, it’s unlikely there’ll be an attack this night. Now, we’re short of water and I want everyone to hand in their water skins. Garvy will ration it out in the morning, first to the … wounded, then the rest.’

The pause was barely perceptible, but Indaro caught it. She knew what he was saying, as did everyone. Water would be given to those of the wounded expected to survive. Those already in the shadow of death would get no comfort, not the smallest sip of water, as they came to their end. It was hard, but it was understood.

Fell said, ‘The Blues are no better off than we are. They have no more water or food. They have many dead and injured. And they are using up more energy attacking than we are defending. So our future is in the lap of the gods. The side which gets reinforcements first will win the day. We are only forty leagues from safety and I have sent out a messenger. We could be relieved tonight. If not, we hold on.’

He paused as if finished, then suddenly spoke again. ‘We are all veterans here. We have all been through this before and survived.’ Indaro saw men and women looking at each other and nodding agreement. ‘Tomorrow we will be called to fight again. We will answer that call as we always have. There will be blood and there will be death. But that will not stop us. It never stopped us before, and it
will not stop us tomorrow. So rest now, and know that tomorrow we will step up again, for the City and for our comrades in arms. We are the Wildcats and we never give in!’

He turned away. There were no cheers from the tired fighters, but Indaro felt the wave of warmth, of unity, sweep through the camp, and men and women went to their rest with their souls burnished by Fell’s words. She knew she was probably destined to die the next day, but she wasn’t afraid. She looked at Doon, who nodded at her. They were both thinking the same.

Garret scrambled up on the boulder beside them. He flopped on to his back and lay breathing heavily. Then he rolled over, and asked Doon, ‘How’s the leg?’

Doon scowled. ‘Staying away from the wounded, Garret?’

‘
You’re
injured,’ he retorted.

She shrugged. ‘We’re all injured. That doesn’t make me one of the wounded.’

He rolled over again and sighed. ‘Do you think they’ll attack in the night?’

Indaro felt the fragile feeling of calm inspired by Fell’s words drifting away. ‘Tonight. Tomorrow. What’s the difference?’ she snapped. We won’t last one more attack, she was thinking. And few of them believed reinforcements were on the way.

‘Fell sent Keema on the last horse. She’ll get through,’ Garret told them with his relentless good cheer.

For some reason, his use of Fell Aron Lee’s given name annoyed her. ‘Are you an idiot, Garret?’ she replied, her temper flaring. ‘She’ll get through – and then what? There’s probably an entire Blue army between us and the City, and if she gets through, as you say, do you really think the generals will pull a detachment away from fighting them to send to our little unit? When has that ever happened?’ She glared at him as if he were responsible. ‘Can you think of a single time when that has happened?’

Garret avoided her gaze, looking down to where Fell Aron Lee was moving about, talking to his fighters, sending guards out to the perimeter. ‘I wonder where old Brog is now. Lucky to have missed all this.’

Indaro shook her head. It was pointless railing at Garret. He was not a fool, but there was something missing in his character. She had never seen him lose his temper, or get downhearted. If she had been
asked a year ago she would have said he was not an exceptional fighter, yet here he was, still alive when many exceptional fighters were dead. As far as she was aware, he had never even been seriously wounded. She shook her head. They called Fell invincible. Yet Garret had been through everything their commander had, and no one called him invincible.

‘I expect he’ll catch up with us sometime,’ she told him more calmly. ‘Time to get some rest.’

She didn’t expect sleep to visit her, lying on a rock in the heat of the summer night, the heavy stench of blood in her nostrils, her hands and face sticky with it. But exhaustion proved more powerful than discomfort, and within moments she was deeply unconscious. When the sound they all dreaded came, she was oblivious, and it took a sharp kick on the leg to wake her up.

‘They’re coming,’ Garret yelled in her ear. ‘Cavalry!’ She reached for her sword and rolled up on to her feet, appalled. The sound of thunder echoed through her head as horses galloped into their camp, their riders armed with torches and spears.

Cavalry, she thought. Reinforcements
have
arrived – for the enemy!

There was howling chaos in the darkness as the injured warriors lying between the boulders were trampled by metal-shod hooves. The remainder of the City soldiers were on their feet, defending desperately, but riders were all around them, streaming through the gap in the rocks and round their sanctuary. There seemed to be hundreds of them. From her high position all Indaro could see was the flare of torch flames and a frenzy of moving black shapes. She chose her moment and leaped on the back of a rider passing the rocks. The weight of her pushed them both off the horse and they fell and rolled, Indaro losing her grip. She curled up in a ball as horses swept by on either side of her, then she jumped up, grabbing the torch off the ground, looking round. In the flaring light it was impossible to tell which of the fighters on the ground was the enemy. She saw a horseman coming towards her and assumed it was a Blue and she thrust the torch in the horse’s face. It reared, veering away from her. Its rider hung on grimly, then Indaro stepped up and thrust her sword deep under the enemy’s breastplate. As he tumbled from the saddle Indaro leaped on and grabbed the reins. She held the torch up, trying to make sense of what she was seeing, acutely aware she could now be taken for a Blue. There were no orders. Where was
Fell? A horse appeared before her in the darkness. ‘Wildcats!’ she screamed – and the rider lowered his spear and charged. Indaro’s mount skittered sideways and Indaro swayed at the same time, and the spear missed her. She sliced her sword across the enemy’s neck as he passed. She felt the clang of metal and then the give of flesh and the rider slumped in the saddle, though he stayed on the horse, which trotted off into the gloom.