Glasswrights' Progress (44 page)

Rani stepped forward, dragging Hal with her until they stood beside Crestman and Mair. Crestman had stopped his cadence as soon as Monny rose up, but Mair was still whispering, the one repeated syllable barely audible amid the pluming smoke of her breath. “Mon. Mon.”

By the time the giant moth moved over the city, the sky had bleached to dirty grey. Rani could make out the giant wings flapping up and down; she imagined she could see Monny's fierce expression. His eyes would be half-closed with concentration; his arms rigid like boards.

For one heart-stopping instant, the flying machine swooped lower, and Rani caught her breath. Even as the great moth recovered and climbed again, Rani wondered at how light-headed she felt. Monny must be exhausted as well; he also had not slept for the entire night, and for the long, trying day before. Rani hugged her arms closer about her chest, ignoring the ache that bloomed in her muscles as if she were commanding the moth herself.

As the grey light faded to dull white, Rani saw six soldiers materialize in silhouette at the top of the city gates. The men stood in full battle gear, their helms donned and their heads tilted up as they studied the demon-bird that hovered above them. Rani could just make out cries from within Sin Hazar's city, and then she saw more guards flood the walls. Crestman had been correct when he said that soldiers would storm to defend the towers; at least a dozen men scrambled over each stone construction.

Monny clearly saw them as well. Rani caught her breath as the boy swooped lower with his flying machine. She imagined she could see him twist his head, pulling back on the leather strap that he held between his teeth. In the tricky light of first morning, Rani could make out the dark rain of arrows released from beneath the drab, moth-like wings.

As the first round was set free, the flying machine leaped higher, relieved of some of its weight. Many of the steel arrow-tips managed to find their homes. Men bellowed in pain, loud enough to be heard on the plain below. Rani saw one guard fall from the gate, tumbling backward to land on the hard ground outside the city.

Monny swooped in again, heading to the east tower for his next attack. Rani imagined that some of the men must have taken cover, but Monny released another volley of arrows.

Now, men were cheering in the Morenian camp, chanting Halaravilli's name as the flying machine wrought its havoc. Monny seemed to be borne aloft by those cries; he flapped his wings with powerful down-strokes. He soared higher, sailing across the gates, coming to hover over the west tower. One beat. Two. Rani imagined the boy beginning to tire. Even Monny must yield to exhaustion at some time. She thought of his pulling the leather strap one last time, twisting his neck to release one final volley of arrows.

There! One last rain of deadly black fell upon the tower. A guard bellowed as he fell, half in an embrasure, half sprawled against the side of the tower. The Morenian army erupted into another round of cheers. Every soldier was now awake and pounding sword on shield. Footsoldiers who had nothing but pikes beat their weapons against the ground, screaming victory as the sun finally blushed the sky to full, bloody dawn.

“MON!” Mair screamed above the clamor, and Rani heard the frantic note, the sudden, sharp despair.

By the time Rani looked back to the city walls, she felt as if a lifetime had beat away. A figure stood on the western tower, mounted on a stone merlon, silhouetted against the bloody dawn. Rani could just make out a bow, arched against the bright sky.

For one horrible moment, Rani remembered another bow, another battle fought, when she had been nothing but a naive apprentice, staring up at her guild's handiwork in the cathedral. Then, a bow had brought disaster, had brought murder and treachery and the destruction of all the family Rani had ever known.

Now, sick and desperate, Rani turned toward Hal, saw that the king was studying the scene through a spyglass. Without thinking, she snatched the lens from his hands, raising it to her own eye. What she saw froze the prayer she'd been about to breathe.

The archer was Al-Marai. Sin Hazar's lion brother.

Monny must have seen the threat as well. The boy pumped his wings harder than before, forcing the machine to rise higher. His feet sawed back and forth, but somehow he had lost his rhythm, lost the careful balance that let him move forward. Rani saw the clutch of panic on Monny's freckled face, and she caught herself breathing, “Higher. Higher.”

For even as Monny fought to control the flying machine, Al-Marai nocked an arrow to his bow. The warrior sighted down the shaft as Rani struggled to follow the line of the arrow, but her vision blurred. Swearing, she shook the spyglass and then returned it to her eye. The end of the arrow was still blurred, wavering in the dawn.

It took Rani another moment to realize what she was seeing. Al-Marai's arrow was alight, the flame bleached out against the morning sky.

As Rani watched, the lion made a slight adjustment in alignment. He pulled the bowstring to his ear, held it for a moment, and then released the burning arrow.

The bolt shot true. Monny's arms were stretched above his shoulders, the moth wings at their apex. The arrow landed at a critical join in the upwind wing, kindling a tight knot of the glued framework. Orange flames blossomed from the glue, leaping across the stretched membrane and exploding up the dried willow bindings. As Rani screamed in horror, the fire raced across Monny's back, chewing into the other wing.

“Mon!” Mair cried again, the single syllable breaking like the flying machine.

Then, the flaming wings began to fold, twisted with the heat of their own burning. Rani watched as the child-soldier kicked once more, sending the moth leaping forward through the air. For a moment, she thought that Monny was trying to clear the wall, trying to land outside the city so that there was a chance, a prayer, that Hal's army could reach him, could save him. As she watched the winged machine arc down, though, she realized that salvation had never been Monny's goal.

Instead, the child swooped low, over the western tower. Al-Marai did not see the danger until too late; he must not have realized the searing pain that a child could endure. He must not have realized how well he had trained the Little Army, how well he had crafted a brave, strong soldier.

Monny caught the lion across the man's back, assaulting him with the full weight of the burning flying machine. The pair of warriors, child and man, toppled over the tower wall and fell atop the oaken city gates. The fighters' thrashing only served to fan the wings' final flames, and the gates themselves began to kindle.

Al-Marai and Monny were tangled in the flying machine, caught up in an inferno of burning leather and willow and rope. The gates had firmly caught fire by the time both man and boy were reduced to charred flesh. The flying machine crashed to the ground at the foot of the tower beside the gates, and the fire continued to chew its way into the wooden barrier.

Rani's belly twisted inside her, and she swallowed acid at the back of her throat. Before she could turn away, though, Mair was fighting to cross the plain, to run within range of Sin Hazar's archers.

“Mon!” she sobbed.

“No!” Rani tugged her arm free from where Hal still gripped her. She launched herself at her Touched companion. “Mair! No! You can't help him now! It's too late!” Mair twisted like a dragon on a pike, spitting and clawing at Rani. “Mair! Stop it! There's nothing you can do!”

Even as she fought with her friend, Rani was aware of orders issued behind her. The flames on the city gates were beginning to die down. Rani could see that the blackened oak planks still stood, but she knew they must be weakened, ready to tear from their iron hinges. As Rani gathered Mair closer, she heard Duke Puladarati issue orders for a battering ram to be brought forward.

Through the chaos, Crestman stood at attention. He did not lift a hand to help the soldiers behind him, to maneuver their massive tree trunk into position. He did not kneel beside Rani, help her to gather up the shivering Mair. He stood like a soldier, staring blankly at the city gates and the charred, blackened pile that had been two fighters.

Once the battering ram was in position, Hal strode beside the weapon, tossing his crimson cloak over his shoulders to display his gold-washed mail. Rani noted mechanically that dozens of men had taken up positions beside the ram. Hal began to exhort them to victory, telling them that they must make the most of a child's death, that they must cement the glory of Morenia.

Before Rani could bring herself to look again on Monny's blackened remains, on the one soldier from the Little Army who had offered up all to his king, a clarion call rang out. For just an instant, Rani was confused, thinking that the horn had blown in Hal's camp, to summon the men, to begin the battering ram's inevitable march.

Then, even as she realized that the metallic clangor came from atop Amanth's walls, she saw that the city gates were cranking open. They moved slowly, ponderously, as if the soldiers who operated the winches were afraid that the iron hinges would not hold. Nevertheless, the gates swung out, scraping aside the charred remains of boy and man and machine, until six men could ride abreast onto the plain.

It took Rani a moment to distinguish the company that did ride through that gap. She expected to see azure uniforms and Sin Hazar's dragon crawling atop the soldiers' helms. She expected to see the sprawl of lion tattoos across high cheekbones.

Instead, she could only make out black-scarred slashes across warriors' brows and glimmering cloaks of darkest midnight. Yrathi mercenaries – a dozen of them. They rode with their double-hooked pikes at the ready, bristling skyward like a deadly thicket. Each man had his sword bared as well, slung in Yrathi fashion from the pommel of his high saddle, ready to drive forward in an instant. The mercenaries' faces were implacable beneath their high helms, staring directly ahead, as if they did not see the battering ram, as if they were unaware of the Morenian soldiers who scurried away from their approach.

Sin Hazar's dragon banner floated in the middle of the company, rich cobalt blue making a mockery of the bleached winter sky. Rani, by craning her neck, could make out the standard bearer in the midst of the Yrathis, and she gasped as she recognized Bashanorandi.

So. The prince was reduced to a squire's job, wrestling with the long dragon banner to keep the standard firmly planted in his stirrup. He stared at the snapping silk with a concentration that bordered on religious devotion. The swan tattoo across his cheek stood out against his pale skin, accenting his ginger hair. His eyes watered in the stiffening breeze.

Behind Bashanorandi rode Sin Hazar, sitting tall and straight on his ebony stallion.

Without thinking, Rani strode to the front of the battering ram. She took her place beside Halaravilli as if she were destined to be there. For one fleeting instant, she longed for a horse, for anything to bring her on a level with Sin Hazar. But she had no mount. She had no shield, no sword. Nevertheless, she raised her chin in defiance.

Rani was vaguely aware of a barked order, and then she saw a company of soldiers fall into place around her. The armed men formed a semi-circle about Hal and Rani, flexing their ranks to let Mair and Crestman pass through, and then Duke Puladarati.

Rani did not permit herself to think of how pitiful the Morenian troops looked, how insignificant the common southern soldiers were against Sin Hazar's splendid Yrathi contingent. At a hand signal from Puladarati, the Morenian guards bared their swords, turning their wicked blades toward the mounted mercenaries.

The two groups of warriors stood in stasis for only a moment, and then Bashanorandi kicked his mount through the Yrathian line. “Hail, Morenian scum!” Rani heard a lifetime of bitterness in the unchivalrous greeting, and she was not surprised to see Bashi's hateful glare directed at her before he turned his attention to his royal brother. “His Majesty, King Sin Hazar, King of all Amanthia, lord of the Iron March, and overlord of Aristine, orders you from this plain and commands you to return to your Morenian hovels. If you have taken leave of this plain by noon, he will show you mercy and not hunt you down like dogs.”

Hal started to step forward, angry words patent on his face, but Duke Puladarati edged to the front of the group. He did not advance far, though, so that he would not have to look up too sharply at Bashi's mounted height. “So, boy. Do you lick your king's boots, as well as hurl insults on his behalf?”

“My name is Bashanorandi, and you'll address me as the prince I am!”

“I know your name. I know you're Felicianda's bastard, and I'll address you as a turncoat and a traitor.”

Bashi's face paled to whey, and he gripped the Amanthian flag so tightly that the dragon swooped forward. “I am loyal to my true liege! I am loyal to King Sin Hazar!”

“Are you certain that's a wise choice, boy? Your Sin Hazar shoots down children as if they were geese!”

“Your
child
cost us our proudest general. Your child brought down Al-Marai, the bravest lion of the Amanthian house!”

“Al –” Puladarati started to retort, but Hal laid a hand upon his arm.

“Aye,” Hal said, taking a single step closer to his brother and raising his voice so that it rang out clearly across the plain. “Bashanorandi, we cut down one your liege held dear. Well might your king mourn the loss of
his
brother, of Al-Marai. I, however, would not stop to spit on the grave of the traitor I called
my
own brother.”

Bashi reacted faster than Rani would have thought possible. Bellowing his rage, he tossed his leg over his horse's back, shifting his grip on the dragon standard so that he brandished it like a pike, in fragile mockery of the still-silent Yrathi mercenaries. He had already crossed half the distance to Hal, was already within a sword's length of the Morenian troops, when a cry rang out.