'Has that engineer of ours—?'
Catapult arms and scorpion bows thumped. Flame launched into the sky. Roberto watched the trails disappear into the belly of the Tsardon army. His hastati there pushed forwards again. Every pace was pained. Every blow was tired.
'Yes, he has. And time you went in too.' 'Keep a drink in the victory cup for me,' said Davarov. 'Just remember the mantra. We win when the banner flies from the beacon. Keep your people believing.' 'Think Jhered'll make it in time?'
'How can you doubt it? He's a taxman. They always show up when they aren't wanted.'
Davarov's booming laugh turned heads. Cartoganev's horns sounded and his cavalry drove out towards the stockade. Roberto rode back to his principal front. Neristus's catapult and scorpion rounds had caused significant damage in the Tsardon ranks and confusion in the centre of the army. His hastati had gained more ground in the immediate aftermath but, once again, their enemy had stabilised. Phalanxes were secure and sword infantry ebbed and flowed around them.
Away at the stockade gates, the Tsardon ram was working hard. It wouldn't be long before they were through. Gesteris was directing arrow-fire down at it but there was an inevitability in the booming crunches that echoed over the battlefield. He needed Davarov to be successful and quickly. And he needed the Gatherers, enraged by the death of their leader, to take out the damned artillery falling on the heads of his reserve. It was going to be a long night.
'Let's give them some support!' yelled Gesteris, racing from the gatehouse and onto the left-hand rampart, his shield held high and to his right.
He had seen the light of a hundred and more torches racing down the army's right flank and had known immediately what was being attempted. The remaining Tsardon artillery had been dragged away to his left and out of the firing arcs of his few pieces when Roberto had appeared. They had been firing diagonally across the battlefield ever since. But they were exposed to a charge, defended neither by the bulk of the army, nor by those assaulting the stockade. Roberto had seen it too.
Smoke billowed up the stockade walls from the fires set by the Tsardon below. His people threw everything at them. Knives, spears, rocks, arrows. Almost anything the came to hand. Behind the fire-starters, Tsardon archers kept up a dense barrage. He was losing too many people.
On the opposite side of the stockade, Kell and Nunan supported a move by Roberto's infantry and cavalry to drive the Tsardon from the walls. He had his engineers ready to drag the stockade in should they succeed.
'Divert your fire towards the catapults and the Tsardon flank defence. Forget the fires. Do it.'
Archers crouched to reload, stood to fire. Every time, an answering volley would come and every time, someone was struck and killed. This could not go on.
'Come on, Roberto, I need you to break them in front,' he muttered.
Out of the night sky, Conquord stones battered into the Tsardon centre. Gesteris could see anxiety there. They had no defence and the answering artillery was only a third that of the Conquord's. If that was silenced too . . .
Gesteris watched the riders approach at full gallop. They crossed the fighting lines travelling four abreast and out of the reach of enemy pikes. Arrows and spears dropped on them from the dark. He saw people pitch from saddles or slump aside and be trodden under the hoofs of their own. Thirty were down before they had travelled a hundred yards.
Behind the defence, the enemy was moving to cover their artillery. Archers and swordsmen turned from the walls to tackle them. Immediately, his own bowmen saw their chance. They emptied their quivers into the backs of the enemy, forced infantry to put up a shield wall to defend them. For a moment, the pressure on the wall eased.
'Come on,' said Gesteris. 'Make it count.'
The attrition rate on the riders was so high. Gesteris saw the flash of a cloak as a man took an arrow in the throat. Levium. So often a name to curse, now one to raise in chant and cheer. The leading riders thundered past the artillery. They swerved in close to the thin pike line defending it. In the half-light, Gesteris saw the glitter of glass and watched the hypnotic sight of torches turning end over end.
The Tsardon were unprepared for it. Sheets of flame spread across ground and wood. They ate into rope and weakened stay, bracket and cup. Six or seven artillery pieces were engulfed. Tsardon ran to try and beat out the flames. His archers turned their attention on them, those with any shafts left.
Every moment the fires were alight was a moment the battle turned just ever so slightly. Gesteris saw an onager arm twist and fall to the side, its rope spring burned through. On the rampart his infantry cheered. The levium, what few remained, galloped away west and were lost to sight. The enemy was going to lose more than half of its remaining artillery to the fires.
But the Tsardon weren't done. The battering ram struck its decisive blow and the gates splintered. Above it, the gatehouse rocked. Tsardon flooded into the compound. At the rear of the stockade, flame rose hot. Legionaries stumbled away while outside, dragging poles were pulling at the weakening wood. Gesteris needed to get some of his people out to counter them before he was attacked back and front. He looked up into the sky. Dawn was still hours away. When it came, he wondered if it would be the last for the Conquord.
They were all up before dawn broke, crowding the bow of the
Hark's Arrow.
All night, there had been lights from the south and southeast, growing brighter. When the sun finally cast its light on the home waters of Estorea and the western limits of the Tirronean Sea, Jhered saw much more than he had feared.
At best guess, two hundred sails chased them from the south-east. The
Hark's Arrow
was a mile ahead and would reach the harbour mouth before them but not by much. South, the first sails he saw were not of the Ocetanas. They were some distance behind and would not catch the Tsardon before they entered Estorr less than five miles away. The invasion would see the Omniscient-blessed city crumble to dust.
The light was picking out her most glorious towers and playing off the aqueducts. He could see the palace, glittering as it always did in the dawn. The city rose as if in welcome to the sun, white, red and beautiful.
'Take a good look, children,' he said. 'This is a sight all should be given the chance to see. And you're going to be among the last. Are you listening to me?'
It was plain enough that they weren't. Arducius and Mirron were deep in conversation. Ossacer stood by them, sullen, his eyes closed. Only Kovan was staring as he should be and he'd seen it all before.
'You'll regret this when it's all so much smoke and ash,' said Jhered. 'This is the best sight in the Conquord. In the world.'
'How wide is the harbour?' asked Arducius.
‘I
, well, I don't know.' Jhered didn't know whether to be irritated or confused by the question.
'Three hundred yards, fort to fort,' said the skipper who had been standing with them scanning the situation with his own magnifier.
The Ascendants disappeared into another brief conversation. Arducius spoke up again. 'We need to get in close.'
'Close? I'm going all the way to the dockside and then running into the hills,' said the skipper. 'What was it you had in mind?'
'No, we have to stop outside the harbour,' said Mirron.
'Why?' asked Jhered.
'Because,' said Arducius. 'We have to use the sea outside the harbour because it has greater energy about it and if we don't, the wave won't be wide enough.'
Jhered looked over at the harbour. 'You mean to block the entrance.'
'But if I'm not close enough, I won't be able to control the energies, not even with Mirron to help me.'
Jhered turned to the skipper. 'Let's get that sail down. I want double time all the way home. This is not over.'
Iliev pounded the forward rail, the only outlet for his impotence and frustration. They were closing on the enemy all the time but still two miles behind. Two miles that meant the difference between invasion and sanctuary. They had seen the fleets to the east. The Tsardon rowing strongly, one ship well ahead of the rest of the fleet but being caught slowly. Patonius had said she thought it a Conquord vessel but Iliev wasn't so sure. If it was, he wished them luck and the grace of Ocetarus. Far too distant, other ships from the eastern docks of Kester Isle followed. By the time they reached the harbour, it would all be over.
The sky was a pearl white today. A thin covering of cloud and a bright sun just without the strength to break through. The winds of the last days that had risen again this morning had blown away the early dusasrise mist and Iliev reflected that at least the good folk of Estorr would see the end of the Conquord approaching.
There was no way to bring more speed to the fleet. No wind that would carry them fast enough to take the enemy by surprise. Despite all their prayers to Ocetarus, the weather had remained doggedly reasonable, allowing the Tsardon to keep far enough ahead that even the Ocenii could not hope to catch them.
'We were a day too long in the docks,' he muttered. 'Just a day and look what it has cost us.'
'Don't blame yourself, Karl,' said Patonius, leaning on the rail next to him with a magnifier to her eye. 'If we'd left a day earlier we would not have been disguised, they would have seen us, sunk us and we would not even have got this far.'
'Then we should have had better warning,' he said. 'We should have been alerted from the southern watchtowers on the Isle.'
'Why are you doing this? Is this some sort of bizarre cathartic ritual, preparing your mind for failure? You know why you weren't alerted. The Tsardon didn't sail into the Isle until they were ready to attack. They used the mists like the Ocetanas have done for generations.'
Iliev saw her stiffen and take her eye from the magnifier briefly. She wiped the end with a cloth and looked again. 'Karl, look to the harbour.'
Iliev did. There was a shadow growing near it. It must be a trick of the light. Frankly, he wasn't too worried about that. It was what was happening closer that brought new hope to his heart. The pair of them stared at each other for a moment.
'Oars, maximum stroke!' yelled Patonius. 'Ready the corsair. Signal the fleet for battle. The Tsardon are turning.'
Arducius knelt at the stern of the vessel with Mirron by him to help channel and amplify. The ship had been turned away from the harbour. The crew were nervous. They'd been told what to expect and he'd seen them all clutching keepsakes and praying to their god of the sea. Now it was down to him, and every spare man was watching him.
In Estorr, warning gongs, bells and horns had sounded at sight of the Tsardon fleet. Across the water, he could hear the thud of drumbeats and the cries of crews straining every muscle. They would be on top of the
Hark's Arrow
before the hourglass was a quarter through.
'Feel the power of the tide,' said Arducius. 'Feel the swell beneath the keel and the slumbering energies. Open your mind to the circle it creates. Bring it to you.'
'I feel it, I see it,' said Mirron.
Arducius could see the immense resonant power of the water, the mesh of lines that ran through it, dark red and thick as his body, pushing, pulling. Or so it seemed. Their energy maps were joined, bright and glorious with the life that flooded into them, held in check by the closure of their lifelines. Slowly, slowly, Arducius reached out with his mind and his right hand. Combined, they could exert the right sort of control. Arducius gasped as he opened his life circuit and joined it with the ocean.
Such unbelievable force. He would not have to amplify it at all but it would take all his strength merely to hold it. Water climbed the side of the ship in response. It swept around his knees, up his body and away over the stern to complete the circuit.
'Steady, Mirron. Can you feel it trying to wash you away.'
'Yes.'
That was how it felt. Like they were part of the wave motion and of the swell that formed the ocean. Arducius knew what he had to do. When the swell came in, he let it flow until it almost reached the blank dark that represented the harbour forts. And there he stopped it going in or out. He let the next wave roll into his static one and push the whole mass higher.
Each time he did, he felt the drag on his energy, the drain on his life to hold that of the ocean still. More and more he built. The boat moved towards the growing wall of water that was climbing straight from the ocean around it. He heard the skipper bark an order and the oars begin to dip, taking them away from the base.
'Enough, Arducius, enough,' said Mirron.
'Hold on,' he said. 'Paul wants fear. We can give him that.'