His Conquering Sword (46 page)

Ursula supposed it might even be true, but she hadn’t cared. From childhood on she had closeted herself in the net and immersed herself in accounts of Salamanca and Crecy, Cannae and Tyre, the bloody trenches of Verdun and the battle of the Pelennor Fields.

A thud shook the tower, slamming her into the side. She tucked and took the impact on her shoulder, and her armor absorbed much of it. The men were really packed too close here to fall down. Above her, she heard the sing of arrows from the covered platform at the top of the tower: the archers, spraying fire down onto the wall. From below, she heard shrieks and cries from the men rolling the great tower forward as stones rained down on them from the walls. Still, the tower advanced.

With a jolt, the wheels met the base of the wall. At once, Ursula sprang into action. She shouted and two auxiliaries cranked out the door, and as if by magic the plank reached and reached—not quite there—and then slapped down onto the parapet of the great wall of Karkand, making a bridge. Early morning light streamed in on them.

With two men on either side of her, Ursula led the charge. She howled. They took up her call and ran, to hit the Habakar defenders before they could foray out onto the bridge. The wood jounced under her feet, and she felt men behind, pounding after them. Arrows showered over them, toward the wall, and a spray of arrows peppered them from the defenders, but their armor was strong. And Ursula had drilled these units, in any case, in the use of shields and swords and spears in close formation.

Three Habakar soldiers scrambled up onto the bridge, but Ursula and the jaran man next to her hit them hard and simply shoved them back. They fell over the side, falling hard on the ramp. Men scattered away from them. Ursula jumped down, landing hard, and set about herself with her sword. She hacked through the first rank, pushing them back. Shields rose in front of her and she shoved and pounded at them, cut at faces and arms and exposed chests. An arrow stuck in her shield; another stuck in the armor covering her right thigh, and then the arrow fire ceased to bother her.

A spear thrust. She flinched away and felt the spear impact her companion. He fell, screaming, and she shouted: “Close up ranks! Close up!” And stepped over the fallen man and kept pressing forward. Another shieldman came forward next to her, and a man on the other side, and they took step by slow step forward, pushing, catching blows and turning them aside, striking—there!—and a man crumpled before them. She took a great stride, to get over his body, and moved forward.

Behind, she heard shouts. “Move up! There! Fire a volley!” Swords battered on shields. Men yelled. Feet thudded on the stone ramparts, and smoke and dust rose from the city, clinging to the walls and throwing the acrid scent of burning into her face. A roar of sound swelled up from the city itself, the blare of trumpets, the ringing of bells, the bellowing of pack animals, the neighing of horses, shouts and sobs and the clatter of wagons and troops of horsemen all soaring on the wind and blending with the din of battle.

Distantly, she heard: “They’re coming up the other side. Krukov is falling back!” But the enemy line before her wavered and she pressed forward.

“Fall back! Fall back!” The words came closer here, just behind her.

She risked a glance behind. By the bridge, fighting swirled and, on the bridge itself, men stood still, staring, stuck out there while arrow fire blurred over them, shattered into them. The archers atop the platform fired in sheets, but it wasn’t enough.

“Open up that bridge!” she shouted, but they could not hear her. “Close ranks!” she cried, and stepped back, letting another man come forward in her place as she pushed back through her own line.

Beyond, on the other side of the bridge, Habakar soldiers in blue and white shoved steadily into the jaran incursion, pushing them back. Ursula felt a cold rage descend on her. How dare they ruin her perfect tactics? A rush onto the parapet, down the ramps, and open the great gates; like Godfrey at Jerusalem, letting the Crusader hordes in to sack the city.

“Move forward! Let those men down! Advance, you fools!” What was it von Clausewitz said? ‘There is nothing in War which is of greater importance than obedience.’ “Advance!”

A spear thrust. She ducked instinctively away from it, and it took her two entire heartbeats to register the point that penetrated her back. The Habakar had broken through behind. She staggered. Another blow hit her hard, and she spun full into their charge across the scattered bodies of her own men.

Pain blossomed, hazing the world to white. In one instant, she realized an arrow had pierced her cheek. In the next—

When the men battling their way over the collapsed section of Karkand’s wall saw the golden banner heralding Bakhtiian’s arrival, they roared and shoved forward into the breach. Nadine watched them. Ahead, the golden banner of the jaran and the blue lion of Habakar rode high together over the ranks of Bakhtiian’s jahar. A commander rode up and delivered his report and rode away. Bakhtiian went on.

Nadine was getting bored. Evidently Bakhtiian had decided to circle the city with his jahar, so that at every point his own men, and the Habakar defenders, would be aware of his presence, and of the death of the Habakar prince. But as part of his entourage, Nadine did not find the circuit amusing. The morning was half gone already. She was bored and she was angry and she was beginning to get a headache from the noise and the dust and the agony of waiting for action. She looked back over her shoulder and could just see Anatoly Sakhalin in the ranks behind, eating the dust kicked up by her jahar’s horses. Surely he was enduring this honor no better than she was.

In front of the great gates, the Veselov jahar waited on the flats just out of catapult range. Two siege towers flanked the gates. One had caught fire, though men still battled over the bridge, and the other was too obscured by arrow fire and smoke for Nadine to see. Leaving Mitya on the height, Bakhtiian rode down with one hundred men to where Anton Veselov and his riders and archers waited.

As if they had only been waiting for him to appear, the small gate within the great gates swung open and Habakar soldiers streamed out; first a few on foot, and then armored cavalry, charging straight for the gold banner.

“Forward!” shouted Nadine. She urged her horse down the slope. A swarm of Habakar soldiers smashed into Veselov’s jahar, beating their way toward the gold banner. But instead of heading for the conflagration itself, she whipped her mount for the gates. Her riders followed her. They broke through the line of Habakar infantry fanned out from the gate and pressed forward.

Nadine slashed down to her right and cut a man off his feet. More soldiers raced out through the small gate, forming into ranks. Ahead, the siege tower loomed, and she squinted up to see men retreating back along the bridge, back toward the tower, being forced back by the defenders.

A man speared at her, and she batted the thrust aside and cut him down. Her horse squealed, throwing its head away from a boil of dust, and she had to fight it until it steadied under her hands. A rider pounded up beside her and reined his horse in. The front lines of her jahar had gone on, leaving her in an eddy behind them. Habakar soldiers lay strewn in their wake.

“Sakhalin!” she shouted.

“I’ll take my men through the gate!” he yelled.

“You’re crazy!” Then she grinned. “I’ll reinforce the tower. We’ll meet at the gates!”

Anatoly Sakhalin saluted her with his saber and they parted in the chaos of battle. She pushed through to the front and pulled as many of her men as she could away from the melee. There, she saw Anatoly Sakhalin charging with twenty riders at his back for the small gate, hacking his way through the defenders. And then he was through, disappeared into Karkand.

“Forward!” They galloped for the tower, and she threw herself off her horse and ducked inside. “Grab shields where you find them!” she shouted to the men pounding after her. She scrambled up the ladders, and her heart thudded fiercely and she gasped for air by the time they got to the top.

To find their own army shrinking back from the defenders.

She jumped out onto the bridge. An arrow hit her, sticking in her armor. Far below, men labored at a battering ram, and others ran scaling ladders forward. The height made her dizzy. She laughed and bent to tug a shield from a fallen man. Her men pressed forward with her, and they shoved back the Habakar defenders and reached the wall. One jaran man still stood upright, staggering under wounds. They surrounded him and swept past, shrieking and yelling so that their own voices deafened her to anything else.

At once she saw the danger, that there were two approaches to the bridge. “Split into two. You, just hold that section of wall. Don’t give way. To the stairs!”

Under their onslaught, the Habakar soldiers gave ground step by bloody step and then, like a dam breaking, abruptly gave way entirely.

“Forward!” They took the stairs with a fury. One poor fool tried to take the steps two at a time and overbalanced under his own weight and tumbled head over heels, crashing down and taking four of the enemy with him.

At the base of the wall, a maze of streets spread out before them, but Nadine navigated by the sound of weapons clashing.

“This way!” She led them at a jog, leaving contingents to guard the side streets, and emerged at last into a market square fronting the main gates. Anatoly Sakhalin and one rider were all that was left, mounted, of his assault; they laid about themselves. Then Sakhalin’s horse staggered under a blow and collapsed, throwing Sakhalin.

“Stay together!” she shouted, seeing two men break forward from the line to try to rescue Sakhalin. “Open the gates!” A whirlpool of fighting flowed past her, and she cut at a soldier dueling calmly with an unhorsed rider. He went down, and the rider turned, raised his saber—and recognized her and spun to join up with her troops.

A great creaking shuddered through the ground. The gates began to open. Nadine pressed forward with her line into the center of the square, sweeping resistance aside, pressing everyone back so that there would be room for the rest of Sakhalin’s jahar to flood in. She stepped over a body and then detoured around a downed jaran horse. A man struggled up from the ground.

“Orzhekov!” Anatoly Sakhalin grinned at her.

“Gods, I thought you were dead!”

“Not a scratch. The gods sent an angel to watch over me. Move aside!” The gates opened, and his jahar clattered in. What was left of the Habakar defenders fled, leaving the jaran in possession of the gates and the market square. On the walls above, jaran men and Farisa auxiliaries swarmed, and archers took up position to shoot down onto the roofs of nearby houses. “A horse!” shouted Sakhalin. He swung up on a mount. “To the citadel!”

Nadine sprang up the stairs siding the gate until she came to the parapet on top. Out on the flats, the golden banner rode high, and the sun it reflected rode higher still, at its apex. She watched as her uncle moved safely away, toward the south, to rally his army at the next gate. Below, the Veselov jahar rode forward, following Sakhalin into Karkand. Nadine hurried down to meet them.

Vera Veselov rode at their head. “Where is your dyan?” Nadine called from the stairs.

Vera glanced up at her and lifted the staff of command in her right hand. “Anton is dead. Killed in the sortie. Men! I want half of you dismounted and to the left. We’ll take each street on foot, clean out every house. Drive the women and children out onto the street and kill any man you find.”

Behind Veselov’s jahar, Farisa auxiliaries waited to enter.

“Orzhekov!” One of her men appeared, leading a horse for her.

She mounted and gathered her troops together with a lift of her staff. “We’ll follow Sakhalin to the citadel!” She cried. “Risanovsky, ride to the engineers. No firing into the city, and we’ll need the siege engines drawn up to the citadel.”

Soon enough she saw that Vera Veselov had the right of it. She dismounted half of her men and sent them in mixed groups to clear the streets. Fires burned and smoke choked them, mingled with dust, but the defense proved haphazard. She rode around a corner into a blizzard of arrow fire and jerked her horse back into cover and sent twenty men to root it out. She listened as they clashed. Beside her, a rider dragged a screaming, kicking woman out of her mudbrick hovel and left her on the ground, where she lay, black hair streaked with dust, stunned and terrified on the threshold. A clot of women cowered at a well, sheltering their children. Three Habakar men lay dead at their feet.

A messenger rode up. “Orzhekov!” He wore the gold surcoat and gold plume of Bakhtiian’s jahar. “Orders to all dyans. Burn the city.”

She nodded. “It’s not safe to go forward yet,” she said.

Already, the next street over, roofs caught fire, thatch flaming. Smoke roiled over them. The women at the well wailed and two riders drove them away from the well and kept after them until they fled away toward the gates, out of the city. A wagon trundled past, driven by an old woman, emptied of everything except blankets and a crowd of weeping children. Two riders commandeered the wagon, sending the old woman and the children on, on foot, and piled it high with valuables stripped from the houses. A baby cried.

The messenger cocked his head to one side. “Do you hear that?” he asked. The baby cried on, an awkward, reedy scream. Abruptly, he dismounted and paced down the street. Nadine watched him, bemused. One of her riders trotted out from around the corner to give her the all clear; they had found and killed the Habakar archers.

Fire leapt and crackled on a nearby roof. In the warren of streets beyond, mudbrick collapsed into a tower of dust. In the distance, she saw a minaret licked by flames. The messenger ducked into a house and, just as he entered, its roof went up in flames.

“Go!” said Nadine, pointing, and her trooper dashed down, but before he reached the house the messenger ran back out, body bent over a scrap of cloth as sparks showered down on him. The roof collapsed in behind him. He jogged up to Nadine and swung back on his horse and then displayed his prize: a little red-faced infant shrieking its lungs out.