Honor Among Thieves (47 page)
“T
hey’re scaling Ditchwall now, and there’s no one to stop them!” Cythera sent her consciousness winging over Ness, trying to watch in every direction at once. “There are two more ladders at Wheatwall. One just fell, but— No! Malden!”
“He’s not your lover anymore,” Coruth growled. “This is why you had to renounce him. Do not tarry with him—tell me where else the barbarians are attacking.”
Cythera watched as Malden hurried toward Ditchwall, shouting for forks and archers. If the barbarians reached the top of the wall and surrounded him, even Acidtongue wouldn’t save him from—
“Tell me what you see, girl!”
Coruth’s voice was tinny and small, as if she were very far away. Even though she sat directly next to Cythera in the main room of their house on the Isle of Horses. It was so hard to stay aware of her body, to keep talking even while her eyes saw things in a hundred places at once. How could anyone do this? How could any witch bear seeing so much and not slip free of her body altogether?
“You may be one of the initiated, but you’re still learning,” Coruth told her, and suddenly the older witch’s voice was much louder. Cythera felt like her being was yanked sideways, pulled away from Ditchwall, as if she were a kite whose string had been tugged. “Look, daughter. Look everywhere—we must know what they’re doing.”
“But why?” Cythera demanded. She couldn’t see Malden anymore—was he overrun? Was he already dead? “What’s the point? Just knowing where the barbarians are doesn’t help anyone. We can’t tell them where to concentrate their forces. We can’t fight them ourselves.”
“Do as you’re told!”
Cythera tried not to think of Malden, to spread her consciousness wider. It was so hard—she’d just learned how this was done a few hours before. “Mother, the city will fall in the next hour—there are so many of them!” At Ryewall a barbarian climbed up on the battlements, only to be struck down by three arrows fired from different directions. At Westwall a fork pushed away another ladder, even as the barbarians raised two more. “We have to stop this. We have to do something, not just watch!”
“And what would you do?” Coruth demanded.
“Cast a spell. Set the ladders aflame, or—or call down a storm, they can’t climb if the ladders are too slick with rain to hold onto.”
“You think those things are in my power?”
Cythera couldn’t bear it. Ness was about to be overrun—the siege broken. The barbarians were about to take the city and there was nothing she could do. “They’ll kill everyone, Mother. They’ll kill every single person in this city.”
“So now you’ve seen the future?”
“I’ve seen enough to know how much blood they’ll shed once they’re inside the walls,” Cythera insisted.
“So the time has come,” Coruth said.
“What time? Mother, we have to help!” Cythera said. She felt as light as a scrap of silk floating on the wind. Her head reeled and her senses were on fire.
A slender thread snapped somewhere, and twanged like a broken bowstring. Cythera felt as if she were being pulled through the air faster than a trebuchet ball, and then she was falling, falling so fast.
With a start she lurched forward and found herself sitting in her chair, back on the Isle of Horses. Her consciousness was firmly back inside her body. She tried to extend her vision again, to see farther, but she could not. It was like she’d never been trained to be a witch at all.
Beside her, Coruth sat, her eyes rolled up in the back of her head. “You’re done for the day,” she said.
“What? But the attack—the barbarians—”
“There’s supper to get ready,” Coruth said, as if it were just an ordinary day. “And you need to sweep out the grate. There’s a week’s worth of ashes piled in there. I expect it all done by the time I return.”
Cythera couldn’t believe it. The siege was about to be broken and her mother could only talk of chores? “Wait—when you return from where?”
“I had hoped there would be more time to train you before things came to this dark pass,” Coruth said. “I can only hope you’ve learned enough.” And then her body erupted in a welter of blackbirds that winged around the room, smashing against the walls and ceiling as they desperately tried to find their way through the open window.
The chair where Coruth had sat was empty.
T
here seemed to be no end to the berserkers willing to scale the wall, even when every ladder was knocked away, even when Malden’s archers kept cutting them down. Messengers kept running in to tell him of new ladders reaching for other sections of the wall—the barbarians were too smart to let him mass his archers anywhere, and instead were sending up ladders on every side of the city. They must have constructed hundreds of them overnight. The ladders were easily destroyed, pushed back by forks, and every time one fell a half-dozen barbarians fell with it.
Yet they kept coming.
“Two at Swampwall!” a messenger shouted. Malden dispatched archers that were already too thinly spread where he stood on Ditchwall. He raced around the circumference of the city, calling for more forks, more people to push the attackers away. He had no lack of volunteers—women and men were pouring out of the Stink, looking for any way to help. They found things they could use for forks, things Malden would never have thought of—threshing flails on six foot long poles, the long brass candle snuffers from the ruins of the Ladychapel—and he put them to work as soon as they presented themselves. Still more ladders came.
A team of old women pushed a ladder away from the wall not a hundred yards from Malden—but not before one crazed berserker was able to grab on to the hoarding there. He swung by a hand for one moment as archers peppered him with shafts, but he did not lose his grip. Like a demon out of the pit he laughed and struggled to pull himself up onto the wall. No one could stop him. The moment his feet hit the top of the wall, the fur-clad attacker came at the old women with axe in hand, clearly not caring who he killed, only wanting blood. Malden had to dash in with every ounce of his speed to beat him to his kill. The barbarian was foaming at the mouth and his bloodshot eyes never blinked as Malden drew Acidtongue and sliced his head off. The head went bouncing down inside the city to smash off the chimney pot of a house far below. Malden kicked the body the other way, to crash down on the frozen soil outside the wall.
It was the first time he’d ever killed a human being with his magic sword. His entire body shook and he thought he might throw up. But now he understood. This was why he wasn’t allowed to give it to the Burgrave. This was why Croy had demanded he take it. Why fate had decreed he should hold it.
He hated the world in that moment. The world where such things were necessary.
“Lord Mayor,” someone said. It sounded like they were very far away. Then he looked up and saw one of Elody’s girls staring into his eyes. She couldn’t be more than sixteen. She held a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other and she looked like a little girl playing with toys. She was terrified, and she needed someone to make everything okay. “Lord Mayor, please—they’re still coming.”
Malden looked down at the sword in his hand, at the blood on its blade, and suddenly he could think again. He looked down, over the parapet, and saw another ladder reaching up toward him, more barbarians scrambling up its rungs.
“Archers! Bring me more archers!” he screamed, though he knew there were no more to be had. There was so much wall to cover that if the archers spread out evenly all around Ness, they would have to stand a hundred feet away from each other. There was no way they could cover every part of the wall, and no way they could kill every barbarian that tried to climb up. It took half a dozen shots to bring down even one berserker—Malden wondered if he’d even had enough arrows made, or if they would exhaust their supply before long.
“Pick your shots with care,” he instructed, and Elody’s girl nodded grimly. “Only shoot the ones at the tops of the ladders—they’re the ones most likely to get in. Aim for their eyes—no—aim for their hands. Leave them unable to climb, and they’ll stall the ones below!”
He ran everywhere, trying to see every side of the city at once. But Ness was too big. His archers were too spread out. He saw barbarians clambering up over an unprotected section of wall. He ran toward them, knowing he had gotten lucky with the berserker he’d beheaded, that if it came to a real fight he would be unable to hold them back. “Get me anyone who can fight,” he shouted. “And archers! More archers!”
He waded into the midst of the barbarians coming over the wall, Acidtongue whirling around him, cutting open arms and stomachs and faces. Some of the barbarians screamed and fell away from the wall, but others—berserkers—didn’t seem to notice they were faced by a madman with a magic sword. One gnashed his teeth at the blade as if he would take a bite out of it. His axe swung at Malden’s head, and Malden knew he couldn’t block it in time. He winced backward, expecting to die.
A dozen arrows appeared in the barbarian’s neck and side and back, knocking him back. Blood spurted from the wounds. The barbarian tried to bring his arm down, tried to follow through with his axe stroke—and five more arrows cut through the muscles of his shoulder. He fell away in tatters, stumbling over the parapet to fall into the streets below.
Malden whirled around to see who had saved him—and saw a dozen archers standing there. He thought they must have come from all over the city and left huge stretches of wall unguarded, only so they could save him. Except there was something wrong with these men—they stood in a perfect line, each of them with their feet spread exactly the same distance apart, each of them holding their bows at the same angle. They even seemed to be dressed identically. He studied their faces and found the features of Tyburn, one of his thieves. They all had Tyburn’s face.
Malden turned slowly around and saw another dozen archers behind him. Every single one of them looked exactly like Guennie, one of Herwig’s girls. As he watched, flummoxed, the Guennies lifted their bows and easily picked a barbarian off a ladder. Their arrows flew in perfect synchrony and hit the same man, the points hitting his flesh no more than an inch apart from one another. More barbarians came scurrying up the ladder, but six identical one-armed men heaved at a fork they’d made by lashing their crutches together, and the ladder spun away to fall and collapse.
The archers, the one-armed men, they didn’t look like ghosts. They looked as real to Malden as he was. Yet it was impossible, utterly impossible.
“Witchcraft,” Malden gasped.
Over Castle Hill, a flock of dark birds were circling, faster and faster. Watching them made him dizzy. Malden turned to look at the next section of wall over, the length called Ditchwall. It was crowded with archers and fork-bearers. They stood side by side, so close their elbows touched. No—not just touched. As they moved to pick new targets or rushed to push back a ladder, they passed right through each other, no matter how solid they seemed. They were illusions, products of some spell Coruth was casting.
And yet their arrows were wickedly real. The forks they wielded pushed with real force against the ladders. How could it be? In Malden’s experience, such phantasms could never touch the living, and certainly could offer them no harm. He thought of the ghostly horses on Coruth’s island, or the illusions he had bested inside Hazoth’s villa the summer before. Those had been diabolically clever and led him toward destruction, but were unable to hurt him on their own.
Coruth’s doubles were killing barbarians as fast as they could come at the wall. The energy she was expending must be enormous. He looked at the circling flock again, and saw one of the birds falter and drop like a stone. For a second Parkwall was bare of archers again, but then they flickered back into existence.
Coruth could not have kept the spell going much longer. Fortunately, she didn’t have to. When they saw what they were facing atop the walls, someone in the barbarian camp was smart enough to call a retreat.
As quickly as it had begun, the attack broke off. Ladders fell, abandoned, against the wall. Bodies were left to lie where they’d broken. The phantom archers kept up a withering fire that followed the barbarians all the way back to their camp, and more than one berserker, too far gone into rage to properly retreat, was cut down while trying to rush the walls with his bare fists.
In the space of minutes, however, all was at peace again—the barbarians safely out of range, the archers lowering their bows. They flickered out of existence one by one as they were no longer needed. Only the original men and women from whom they’d been copied remained.
Over Castle Hill, only a few birds still flew, circling madly. Eventually even they slowed and flapped wearily toward the nearest roost, utterly drained.
Malden waited another hour, to make sure the barbarian retreat was not just a ruse. Eventually he sat down on the battlements and rested his face against the cold stones of a merlon.
It was there that Slag found him.
“Lad,” the dwarf said, “there’s something you need to see.”
M
alden followed the dwarf down a flight of stairs to the level of the streets. The bodies of dead barbarians lay here and there on the cobbles, having achieved a glory few of their fellows could boast—they had actually made it over the wall.
“I’m feeling rather pleased at the moment,” Malden said. He felt giddy, actually. Like he’d drunk too much wine and was about to pass out. “We’ve accomplished something here. Bloodied their noses, at least. Why do I have the feeling you’re going to ruin this all-too-rare mood?”
Slag frowned and shook his head. “I don’t want to piss in your puncheon, lad, but—”
Malden closed his eyes and sighed. “All right. Just tell me what is wrong now.”
The dwarf led him down a street that ran alongside the Ryewall. The street was only six feet wide in places, flanked on one side by the wall itself, on the other by a row of tall houses that formed a close. It was here that Slag had set up a strange tableau. Only a little snow had fallen into that artificial canyon, but even so Slag had swept patches of the cobbles perfectly clean. Then he had laid out a series of shallow bowls, each ten feet from its neighbor.
He had a cask of wine under his arm and he proceeded to extract its bung. Malden grabbed the cask from him and held it over his head so the wine fell into his mouth. “My thanks. I needed a drink.”
The dwarf grabbed the cask back with a growl. “That’s not for you, lad. Normally I’d use water for this purpose, but it’s so arsing cold out here the water would freeze. Wine will serve just as well.” Moving from bowl to bowl, he filled each with an inch of wine. Then he knelt next to one of them and stared into its surface.
“Scrying?” Malden asked. “I thought dwarves never used magic. Although these are desperate times.”
Slag stood up and glared at him. “Take me for serious, lad, for what I’m about to tell you is no joke. I believe the attack on the wall was just a feint.”
Malden had been worried that was the point of all this. All the jests he could think of wouldn’t put off the truth. “What makes you think that?” he asked.
“If I’m right, all that noise and blunder was just to distract our watchers while they started coming at us from a different direction. Look, and be still now. Watch the surface of the wine.”
Malden knelt down next to Slag and tried not to so much as breathe on the bowl. At first he saw nothing—but then the barest shimmer passed across the surface of the wine. A moment later it came again. It could have been the breeze, but—no. There was a rhythm to the movement of the wine. Again. Again.
“This is an old trick we use in our mines, up north,” Slag whispered. “If you think somebody else is digging too close to your claim, you set out bowls of water to track ’em. The vibrations from their tools run through the earth and make the water dance. If you set out enough bowls, you can triangulate and work out how far away they are and what direction they’re coming from.”
The wine shook again. Again. Again.
Slag jumped up and moved to the next bowl. He waited a moment over it, then ran to a third. “Here. It’s strongest here,” he said. Malden came and stood beside him. The wine there shook more visibly, distinct ripples forming in the surface.
“What does it mean?” he asked softly.
Slag’s shoulders tensed. “Sappers. Fucking sappers. They’re digging a tunnel under the wall. Propping up its roof with loose timbers. When the tunnel’s gone far enough, they pull out the timbers, and—crash!—the wall won’t be able to support its own weight. It’ll collapse into the empty space.”
Malden thought of something. “We heard a rumor that Mörget managed to bring down the wall of Redweir in just three days. I assumed that meant he used picks and drills, but—”
“Aye, lad,” Slag said. “He must have had sappers there, too.” The dwarf shook his head. “Between this and those trebuchets he built, when nobody ever heard tell of a barbarian with a siege engine before, well, I think we ought assume Mörg has a fucking dwarf on his side. Somebody who knows about this manner of skulduggery.”
A dwarf, working for the barbarians. It was hard to imagine—and it did Malden’s composure no good at all. Combine the technical skill of a dwarf with the remorseless bloodthirst of a barbarian and you were up against an unstoppable enemy.
“How long, do you think, before this tunnel is complete?”
Slag shrugged. “These walls are sound, and sunk deep. It’ll take time. Maybe a week. Assuming we don’t stop them first.”
“We can stop them?” Malden asked, hope springing anew in his bosom.
“Perhaps, lad. In theory it’s simple enough. We just have to dig our own tunnel that intersects theirs. Then we kill every fucking one of them.”
“But then there will be a direct tunnel from their camp to the inside of the city. What’s to stop the barbarians from sending through a whole army?”
“They can try,” Slag said with a half grin, “if they don’t mind us collapsing our tunnel on top of ’em once they’re in so deep they can’t turn back.”
“Remind me never to cross you,” Malden said. “I don’t think I’d enjoy your revenge overmuch. This is excellent work, Slag. The city will thank you, somehow. Is there some reward I can offer you?”
“Put about ten more hours in each fucking day,” Slag said. “Between digging a countertunnel and working on my secret project, I’m going to need ’em.” He shrugged. “I’m in this with you, lad. It’s my head, too, if we lose now.”
Malden grabbed the dwarf’s shoulder. This time Slag didn’t flinch.