Once A Hero (33 page)

Then again, I did make double and triply certain that Sture had not managed to secret a rock in my armor as I prepared myself for battle. Assaulting a fortified city is one thing, but tempting fate with magick is another altogether.

Aarundel came for me just as I finished dripping wax onto a folded parchment and pressed the butt cap of my dagger down to seal the missive. Flipping Wasp around, I returned it to its sheath in my right boot. "I want to entrust this to you. Send it to your sister if things go badly for me out there."

Aarundel held his hand out for it. "As I have in each battle before, I will hold the message for you and return it when the hostilities are terminated."

I shook my head. "I appreciate your confidence, but this is far nastier a battle than we have faced before. In the open field the Steel Pack is a force to be reckoned with. Breaching a wall is something else entirely."

"The nature of the task matters not, Neal." Aarundel slipped the message into a pouch on his swordbelt. "You wield Divisator. You are destined to win an empire. Until then I harbor no trepidation concerning your safety."

"The sword didn't do much to protect Tashayul."

"He deluded himself with an ambitious reading of a flawed translation."

"I hope your translation is better."

"I have the prophecy in the original."

I stood in a rustle of mail. Had we been riding into combat against another line of heavy cavalry, I would have donned a full suit of plate armor. In a charge the sheer weight of heavy cavalryman in collision can shock, stun, or even kill an enemy, which is why few troops choose to become the target of the Steel Pack. In addition to the weight, the full plate helps turn Haladin arrows, which, at close range, have an annoying habit of sticking into ring mail.

If things went as planned, we would be fighting in the city, so I chose to armor myself with my Roclawzi ring mail and supplemented it with a limited amount of plate. The combination would not sacrifice mobility or speed if I had to travel on foot, and yet it would keep me safe. My hauberk covered me from midforearm to midthigh and included a hood that protected the back of my neck and my ears. To that I added bracers, gauntlets, greaves, cuisses, and knee-caps. I decided against armoring my feet because I wanted a good feel for the stirrups in case I had to kick free of the saddle, but I did add a toe spike to my boots in case fighting became far closer than I hoped.

Cleaveheart rode on my left hip, and I chose to carry a small target shield on my left arm. I planted a steel cap on my head because I had less confidence in the prophecy than Aarundel and because only an idiot would go into battle without a helmet. Even a glancing blow to the skull can put a man down, and being knocked senseless in this fight would mean death.

I followed Aarundel from the tent to where our horses waited. Once again the nature of the fight we would face had forced a choice when it came to armoring Blackstar. I decided to encase him as completely as practical in metal. The steel chamfron had two ram's horns curling out from just in front of the ear holes and ring-joined plate made up the crinet and cuello armoring his neck and throat respectively. The peytral had a spike in the center, and the wings came back to cover Blackstar's shoulders as far as the saddle. Flanchards hung from the edges of my saddle to protect his ribs, and they joined with the crupper covering his flanks, thighs, and rump. The armor added nearly a hundred and fifty pounds to our weight but guaranteed his safety in case the prophecy did not.

I pulled myself up into the saddle without assistance. Despite the fact that my armor weighed at least half what Blackstar's did, it was not deadweight and, therefore, did not tax my strength to move. The day men start wearing armor so heavy they cannot get into a saddle without aid is the day I go into battle naked except for a big stick with which to knock them from their mounts and a small dagger to finish them off. In the battle between strong and swift, swift wins every time—provided there is room to run.

Thrusting aside my misgivings about a city not providing much room to run, I accepted a lance from one of the grooms and reined Blackstar around. In riding over to where the Steel Pack awaited me, I rode past the Veirtu. They recognized me and set to howling and hooting in a way that I might have found mocking if I didn't know who they were. As it was, I just howled like a wolf back at them, and they took that gesture in great humor.

The Veirtu go into battle all but naked, though they use weapons more powerful than sticks and ltittle daggers. They worship Chavameht and claim to be possessed by one or more of the many animalistic spirits that are that god's servants or avatars in the world. They gravitated to the rebellion against the Reithrese more because I'm known as the Dun Wolf and Beltran is called the Red Tiger than out of any real hatred of the Reithrese. Warrior-priests all, they wear the skins of their particular totem spirit, use bows, and in close combat wield knobby war clubs that are painted up with all sorts of strange and arcane symbols. They also employ strange battle magicks that do not have great range, but tend to leave their targets with gaping and horrible wounds akin to those one would find if the target had been mauled by wild animals.

Fursey Nine-finger rode up to me as I joined the Pack. "I see we have the screaming idiots following us. It's for real, then?"

"It is. We're the Dragon Tower. Form up in double file, on me."

Fursey turned and repeated my orders. Each of the five companies formed up in double ranks forty riders long. With Aarundel at my side and the Dreel loping along on the left, I started us out at a walk on a serpentine course that would parade us at the extreme edge of range for Jarudin's mangonels. We would ride parallel to the walls, as we had done at this time for the past four days, and if we were lucky, we would again attract a crowd of defenders watching and laughing at us.

Out ahead of us the Steel Hunt performed a similar parade maneuver. From behind, as we drew opposite the Dragon Tower—so named because of the dragon motif used for the gargoyles festooning it—a trumpet sounded from our lines. The sharp snap of axes chopping through cord, and catches being slipped, presaged the mighty groan of wooden catapult and trebuchet arms as they bent to their duty. In a whirring whoosh akin to a quick breeze rising, huge boulders flew skyward and arced up high above our heads.

Our siege engines, because they were larger than those mounted atop Jarudin's towers and battlements, had both a greater range and a greater capacity than those used by the defenders. The stones they hurled, some spherical and others rectangular quarry blocks, spun lazily, end over end. As the first passed the apex of its flight, another trumpet blast sounded, and the whole of the Steel Pack turned to face the walls. When that first stone hit, we began our advance.

The initial strike against the Dragon Tower hit low and hard. Though the missile shattered when it struck—pieces rebounding and tumbling back out toward our lines—portions of several foundation blocks crumbled right along with it. Two more boulders pounded into that same area, enlarging the wound. The thunderclap of their hammering shuddered through me. Though a growing cloud of dust obscured the base of the tower, screams and shouts from the people in it told me severe damage had been done.

The next three stones hit higher. One bounced off the top of the wall, reducing an onager to flinders and the men tending it to bloody memories, then fell down to wreak havoc in the city below. The other two did not hit so well or dramatically, but the tower wavered under their blows. More people screamed, and black cracks ran a geometric zigzag through mortar up the front of the tower.

The last four stones hurled came down on target. One hit the tower near the top, breaking off finials and merlons as if they were teeth. The other three crashed down through the dust at the tower base. Splinters and fragments from them flew back out of the dust. The stones' impact sounded hollow, and I guessed that they'd actually punched through the tower's exterior. That had been the plan, and if it worked, the tower should come down.

Down it came.

The cracks running up the front of the tower spread out like plant roots. Dust shot from the windows and arrow slits as the tower's internal structures broke away. Support for them eroded from the ground up, creating stresses that ripped them apart. Through the dust I could see blocks and gargoyles beginning to fall away one by one, then that became a cascade and finally an avalanche of stone. As if the Dragon Tower had been built from glass, it collapsed in a rumbling roar that shook the ground. With a dust cloud billowing out like fog, the tower's stone flesh fluidly spilled out into the field as if it were a stony carpet being rolled out to greet us.

A great cheer rose from behind us, but the warriors in the Red Tiger's army knew the battle had not been won with the fall of one tower. As we spurred our horses into a trot, one whole unit of archers came running out behind us. Armed with longbows, they sent shaft after shaft over our heads and down into the gap. At that range none of us expected the arrows to have enough force to pierce armor, but soldiers on the other side would take cover sooner than test that idea with their lives. For similar reasons a number of our smaller siege machines had been loaded with stones ranging in size from thumbnails to fists. Our soldiers used them to sweep the walls and gap to force defenders down.

The stones that had been used to build the walls had varied in size, shrinking in accord with their distance from the ground. As the tower came down, the stones ground against each other as if they were pressed together in a giant mill. The leavings from the stones high up filled the spaces between the larger blocks, which did not move much, creating a crushed-gravel roadway. While it was not level, and oily smoke poured up from pockets where things burned below, it provided solid enough footing that Blackstar took to it without any hesitation and only a slight slackening of speed.

I cut Blackstar back and around a marble midden as Shijef dashed past. He leaped from the stone mound to the broken edge of the wall and clung there as if he were a titanic, rabid squirrel. Tail twitching, he dove down, and I lost sight of him just before I crested the hill. A blood-curdling scream of triumph rang from the walls, followed by frenzied shouts that ended in gurgles and moans.

Up and over I went, the first of the Steel Pack's riders into Jarudin. Blackstar slid down the far side of the wall's ruins, then sprang forward to flat ground. He shied to the left, moving away from where the Dreel yodeled in delight. Shijef shucked a Reithrese warrior from his steel carapace, carrying away more than just metal as he did so. Blackstar's movement brought me into range of another warrior perched on a rooftop. He screamed some oath at me and leaped, but I reined Blackstar around even closer to the house and caught the airborne warrior on the point of my lance. He curled up around it and clattered to the ground like a tin pot.

I released the lance and drew Cleaveheart. Giving Blackstar some spur, I drove forward down Dragon Street. Riding clear of the dust and smoke from the collapsed tower, I split one man's skull with an overhand blow. Aarundel rode another man down, then stabbed him with the spike on his ax before reining up beside me.

Dragon Street led a mile straight on to the Imperial Tower. Every quarter mile between the wall and the city hub, where the three ring roads cut across the street, it widened out into a square, at the center of which stood a fountain or monument. If we were to meet resistance, it would be at one of those points, so the faster we moved in, the less likely we were to be stopped. As nearly as I could see, no one had formed up to oppose us, but the Reithrese had barracks deep enough in the city that I had no doubt we would yet run into stiff resistance.

Aarundel pointed his bloody ax to the west. "Griffin Tower has fallen."

Fursey rode up behind us. "First Company is through."

I nodded. "Form up eight abreast." Looking up, I saw Shijef running across rooftops, leaping street-wide gaps as if they were cracks between cobblestones. With so much death he had to be all but out of his mind with glee. I knew that if I saw him hanging from the eaves like a gargoyle in Jammaq, I'd be getting near trouble, and that little bit of information might be just enough to keep me alive.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something further down the street. Instinctively I brought my shield up and felt something hit it hard. A cruciform broadhead pierced the steel, but did not pass entirely through the shield. As I lowered the shield, the Reithrese archer turned and started to run. Aarundel yelled at him in Reithrese, and the warrior started hollering back when the Elf's words reached his ears.

I tipped the shield toward me to get a good look at the shaft buried in it. "It was lucky I raised my shield."

"Prophecies are not easily frustrated."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, that Reithrese should have known enough not to waste the arrow, then."

"So I scolded him while he fled."

Fursey returned with his men right behind him. I let them file around us to take up a forward position. As the Second and Third companies came through—commanded by Senan and Ross—they positioned themselves behind the First Company. Four and Five slipped into the smaller streets east and west respectively. I put Gathelus to the west because he had worked with Drogo before, and let the new man, Benedict, have our eastern flank.

Riding up to the front of the Pack, I saw no change in activity during the five minutes it had taken for us to get inside. As the Veirtu started through the gap, I led the Steel Pack forward. For the first quarter mile we might as well have been parading through Polston, because we ran into no trouble and even had Humans in the windows cheering us on. I forbade the men any shouting or accepting of flowers or jugs of wine and picked up our pace.

Our advance into the second ring of the city was marked by a distinct change in architecture and inhabitants. Leaving ramshackle and widely disparate human dwellings behind, we rode into a sector of the city that housed the Reithrese lower classes and their Human allies.