Hell at the Gates, page 8
Beyond that, a wedge of color caught Jon’s eye, white hoods and red capes parting the muddy, bloody riot before it. The glimmer of steel at the fresh wave’s periphery told Jon the newcomers’ blades were purchasing the way to the front. He got a look at black banners with the Shaedar’s personal emblem spreading over the disciplined block and felt chill rush through him.
Janizarries...
Ducking behind the works, Jon picked up the grenade Edisten had handed him and shook it at the gnome. “Now?”
The gnome, who’d been reloading his weapon from the bandoliers he’d left behind the works, began to shake his head when a shadow spread over him. He flung himself onto his back, at the same time cocking the firearm and barking a curse. Fire jetted from the super-weapon’s muzzle and the Fey coming over the wall at Edisten stiffened and stared down at the fist-sized hole punched through his torso before flopping off the barrier and out of sight.
Movement in the corner of his eye sent Jon rolling away from his crouch at the works. An axe bit the rubble where he’d been a second before. Jon regained his feet as the Fey, a black-haired, sinewy killer, hefted his axe for another wild chop.
The strange lightness, the crackle about his movements that Jon had felt in the fighting for the Witch of Vendar, weeks before, washed through him. The sword of his father warmed in his touch, seemed light, even humming with anticipation of blood. The Fey came on, shrieking. Jon stiffened, brought his sword to a high-handed guard.
Edisten shot the Fey in the side, dropping him at Jon’s feet. Alternating between curses and maniac laughter, the gnome spun, cocked his weapon and cut down another Fey at the works.
Arquebus shots crashed along the line, Jon’s company, no longer willing to wait for the command, fired at will as the Fey crowded towards them. Jon swore, knew no one could hear him. He found Hark in the chaos, the older man locking frustrating gazes with his superior for an instant. To the company’s left, Urglass’ men opened up with a stuttering volley. Many were already hand-to-hand with the enemy.
Jon stepped over the dead Fey and knelt at Edisten’s side, picking up the grenade from where he had dropped it when attacked. “It has to be now, you crazy gnome fool! They’re on top of us!”
Edisten ignored him, firing a shot before ducking down behind the works to meet Jon’s glare. “The Janizarries aren’t in the breach yet.”
Jon cursed and raised his head to the lip of the works. Aren’t in the breach? How damned close do they have to get?
Below his vantage, Fey still stumbled and pawed their way up the incline, rubble shifting under their fatigued grip, shattered stone growing slick with their dead comrades’ gore. And now a shock wave rippled from behind, Fey who’d suffered hell all morning to get this far flinching away as the spearhead of the Shaedar’s picked troops plunged in.
Huge Janizarries near the point of the formation threw slow or battle-numbed Fey aside, kicking and stomping the more stubborn or outraged, cool and unflinching in their nearly mechanical will to join battle. Their banners swept towards Jon, one eclipsing the smoky sky as its bearer shouldered his way to the works inside the breach. Jon could see the polished ivory staff, the gilded steel crown, crafted to resemble a winged skull. The black silk hissed in the hot, burnt powder-reeking air, splashed with dozens of handprints of apparently fresh blood.
Jon ducked down and barked at Edisten, “Well, they’re in the breach now!”
“Why didn’t you say so?” the gnome snapped back. He nodded at the fuse on the ceramic globe. “Light it and throw!”
Jon shot the gnome a look then turned. “Grenades!” He looked around for anyone to listen, to hear. Faces turned towards him and he stood, bellowing, “Grenades, damn you all! Hark! Hark, light them! Light and throw!”
Jon knelt beside a Morabian gunner who might have been even younger than he was and thrust the grenade, fuse pointing outward, toward him. The youth nodded understanding and raised his arquebus, bringing the slow match into contact with the fuse, which touched off in a puff of sparks. Jon turned on his haunches and edged up to the lip of the works, arm cocked back, eyes seeking a safe moment for the throw.
“Don’t fucking wait!” Edisten shrieked, diving into the rubble and covering his head. “Throw it! Throw it!”
Jon glanced down at the grenade in his hand. Oh, shit. Sizzling flame had already devoured half the fuse’s length.
Without thought of any danger beyond the one about to explode in his hand, Jon shot to his feet, leaned back, and hurled the grenade out over the works, trailing a thread of smoke. Edisten’s hand clamped down around his ankle and yanked, lashing his balance out from under him and dropping him to the rubble with an impact that dashed sparks across his vision.
The ground leapt beneath Jon, flopping him airborne with his helm spinning off then slamming back into his spine, driving shards of rubble into the base of his now-bare skull as a tremendous whoompf ripped the air. Jon caught clumps of mud, rubble, weapons, and bits of gear pluming skyward. A terrible groan went up beyond the works in the breach.
Jon had no time to recover from the blast. A second and third detonation pounded through the ground, shaking dust from wreckage that quivered like a living thing as more explosions followed in a trembling crash like repeated thunder-strikes right beside him. Jon couldn’t hear the shrieks of pain anymore, his ears stunned into a dull ringing as the ground quivered beneath him on and on.
It was more by the let-up in the tremors than by the drop-off of the din that Jon knew to pull himself back up to the top of the earthworks.
The breach below the works seethed, smoke intermingling with curtains of still- settling gore. Red-painted rubble shifted. Things that had been whole bodies squirmed and screaming amongst yellow-white flashes of bone shards and glistening tags of viscera. Shreds of Janizarry white and red fluttered down, ash-like over the carnage.
By the One! Jon recoiled from his perch at the works, the scene of carnage too much like the horror animated in that fishing village. He sobbed suddenly for breath, his pulse hammering a frenzied tattoo in his temples. He gagged back vomit taste. How could something as small as those grenades do all that?
Edisten vaulted atop the works and fired his weapon once, twice, then held it overhead, shaking it wildly as he bellowed, “Take that back to your blood cult, you sons of bitches!”
Jon stared at the frenzied expression on the gnome’s face. How could we do all that?
Detonations tore his ears anew. He looked to the left in time to see the smoky tails of more grenades arching out over the Fey, men stunned by the destruction only now getting their grenades lit and thrown. Globes of momentary fire blossomed amongst the Fey. Bodies caught near them simply ceased to exist, kicked back from the blasts in fragments that scythed down comrades twenty feet away.
Flecks of light picked at the corner of Jon’s vision. He heard shouts of alarm and glanced down the line. Morabians fumbled about, bumping into one another as they grappled for something tumbling in their midst, something trailing sparks and smoke and...
Oh my—
The shockwave of the grenade blast hit Jon like a backhand blow, jolting him back onto the earthworks as a wave of debris and rock fragments stung across his face. He scrabbled at rubble, tried to get back to his feet, blinking away afterimages of men silhouetted for a horrid instant against the glare of the explosion. Vaguely, he could hear Edisten hollering at his side.
Tags of flame and smoke lingered about a crater as debris clattered down around it. Morabians and shapes that had been Morabians thrashed and shrieked in the wreckage. Some appeared unhurt, stunned or cowering in terror, others scrambling to their feet and bolting for the rear.
Hark struggled to his hands and knees amongst the chaos and gave his head a shake, eyes clouded with shock, blood drooling from his nostrils and ears. He clapped a dazed Morabian on the shoulder, growled something. Turning, he began hollering at the others.
The explosion within the defenses had sent a shockwave through the attackers, too. Janizarries and Fey, crouched low amongst the rubble in the wake of the grenade volley, looked up, their eyes shining out from masks of powder soot and drying gore with a maniac light. Their collective gaze went to one spot.
The blast had scooped a trough out of the earthworks, left a gap fifteen yards wide.
Feyan lips peeled back, growls spreading through the packed mass, punctuated by cries of triumph and fury. Bugle calls burst over the rising cacophony, followed by hollered orders. The growl swelled into a thousand-throated roar as the mob of attackers surged to its feet and erupted for the works in a wave front of flashing teeth, blazing eyes, and steel.
Jon launched to his feet, amazed to find his sword still clenched in his fist, the grip warming to his palm, the blade seeming to glimmer with flecks of cyan light. Edisten erupted at his side, but Jon’s long-legged strides quickly left the smaller being trailing in his wake, barking a battle-cry and fumbling to cock his weapon.
Jon reached the gap as the first attackers came through. A halberd-bearing Fey chopped at Hark, who blocked the blow with his sword in a two-handed grip but was knocked onto his back by the force of the blow. The Fey didn’t see Jon’s thrust coming and jerked back with surprised eyes as Jon rammed the point of his sword through the attacker’s sternum.
The blade of Jon’s father slid out of the Fey with hardly any resistance and the body dropped aside. Another figure lunged past it, a scimitar cutting a steely arch through the air. Jon met the swing with his sword and for a moment stood locked with his assailant, his cyan-flickering edge grinding a notch into the curve of the scimitar.
Tatters of white hood fluttered about a cleanly-shaved face that was human but for the inhuman snarl of hatred twisting it.
A Janizzary.
Jon shifted onto his left foot and pivoted his blade, jerking the quillon up and cracking it against the Janizarry’s temple. The man staggered, blood spurting from the blow and his grip on his weapon loosened. Jon stepped further left to give him self room and whirled to the right in a stroke that bit into the Janizarry’s flank, slicing through chain mail under his hauberk. The man dropped onto one knee. Jon’s reverse stroke went through the meaty part of his neck and the Janizarry crumpled, his head tumbling free on a jet of bright red spume.
Edisten’s weapon boomed and another Janizarry went down. The gnome turned to face another attacker, but his weapon clicked without firing. Edisten gave the weapon a shake, swearing in at least three languages. The Janizarry bayed in satisfaction and chopped downward. The gnome caught the blow on the barrel of his weapon, angled over his head, but the force of the strike drove him to his knees.
Jon struggled to reach Edisten but another Fey blocked his path, swinging for his skull with a cudgel. Jon ducked the blow and the Fey’s motion carried him sideways past him. Jon rammed the pommel of his sword backhanded into the Fey’s flank, dropping him stunned to receive Jon’s over-handed slash into his back. Stepping by the mortally wounded Fey, Jon searched wildly for Edisten.
The Janizarry attacking the gnome booted him in the chest, knocked him sprawling and cocked his arm back for another swing. Edisten fumbled for something and then lunged, plunging a tiny knife into the man’s crouch. The Janizarry froze, wild-eyed and squealing with sudden agony. Hark finished him with a sword thrust from behind.
Edisten sprang to his feet, drawing a short sword that in a man’s hand would be little more than a long knife. He dived into the tangle of struggling men and Fey, rolling amongst their legs, stabbing and slicing at calves, knees, and thighs. Everywhere Jon looked Fey and Janizarries, locked in mortal struggle with Morabians, yelped and grasped in pain and distraction at the gnome’s stings.
Blasts jolted from the Saint Mordanus gun towers, the witch-fires having subsided, only the streaks of cannon fire lighting their battlements now. Shot and shrapnel wailed down into the killing ground outside the breach. Fey and Janizarries waiting to crowd into the gap were raked into bloody ruin.
A figure in spiked, crimson armor shouldered past Jon. Dismounted Blood Knights flowed into the earthworks, wading in amongst the combat with swords, axes, and maces flying. Morabians from the companies reforming in the rear surged forward after them, plying short swords now instead of pikes and arquebuses that would be useless in the close confines. What Fey had made it over the works broke off and scrambled back the way they had come. Isolated pockets of Janizzaries held out longer, but not long against the more heavily-armed and armored Blood Knights and the tide of counter-attack following them.
Cheers and scattered arquebus shots spread along the line. A Feyan bugle warbled over the din and Jon didn’t have to know the foreign calls to know it meant retreat. The cheering swelled, going wild, frenzied with release and the relief of survival. He let a breath escape, feeling the tide of weariness cool the hot thrill of the fight. He felt himself sagging and drove the point of his sword into the ground to lean on the handle. The grip had gone cool under his hand and the blade no longer flickered, blood drying on the enchanted steel in clots.
Hark slumped near Jon’s side, grimaced as he pressed a rag to his shoulder. He met Jon’s gaze with a weary smile and a headshake that told Jon he wasn’t hurt badly. The two of them looked about at the celebrating defenders.
A small voice shouted for help.
Jon glanced about for Edisten, panic constricting his throat. Men and Fey lay in tangled all around, some still moving or mouthing wordless pain. A pile of Janizarries twitched in the churned wreck of the gap. A small boot kicked beneath them.
Jon scrambled to the pile. He got one Janizarry by the shoulders, an enormous brute that took all Jon’s remaining strength to heave aside. Edisten emerged from beneath, covered in filth and blood. The gnome’s cursing and flailed motions to get free told Jon none of the blood was his.
“Took your time!” the gnome barked, slapping away Jon’s hand, extended to help. He stumbled free and looked at his slain foes. “Janizarries. Foul men. Men...ha!” He spat on the corpses. “They don’t even deserve to be called that!” Edisten looked about at the jubilation. “I take we won?”
Jon sat down, nodding through exhaustion. “We won.”
Edisten wiped at his brow and looked at the filth smeared across the back of his hand with a wince. The expression of distaste flew away before a grin of wild triumph and the gnome thumped his chest. “Of course, we won. Ammahdan and Dwymli and all those old fools; I told them! Hope is gone...bah! I told them! We won!”
Jon grinned at the small being’s exuberance. But the grin didn’t last, as his gaze went out over the wreck of the day’s battlefield. The tide of attackers receded from the gap in tossing disorganization, blasts of artillery fire kicking it into further anarchy. But beyond the chaos ordered blocks in the white and red of Janizarries, black and silver of Feyan Black Guard further back, waited in disciplined silence, a fresh ocean of might as yet unleashed. They made no move to join the destruction, probably would not.
But they weren’t going anywhere.
“Yes, we won,” Jon said grimly and looked at Edisten. “For now...”
Chapter Four
Aftermath
Manzarba watched Arneus stalk back and forth in the Shaedar’s pavilion, arms folded before his chest, blue-black eyes stabbing fury and hate at the Fey crowded silently around him. Some of the officers had seen action that morning, were still smeared in the filth of their failure. A midday sun had come, bringing a damp, suffocating heat that filled the tent with the choking stench of sweating bodies. But none of the Fey dared move, even to wipe perspiration from flushed brows.
Daedon Nazrak stood nearest the Shaedar, most of the other commanders cringing away from him, as if lingering too near the Grand Aga meant contracting disease. Manzarba was well enough bred to almost feel pity for him.
Almost.
“Someone needs to tell their Shaedar why this happened,” Arneus said, his voice low and quivering with barely-controlled anger. When no one answered him, he whirled on Nazrak and shrieked, “Why did this happen?”
Nazrak licked his lips and replied, “It’s difficult to say, Greatness—”
“It wasn’t difficult to tell me, last night, that we’d be in that city tonight, was it?”
Nazrak blinked once and adjusted the position his helm, held under the crook of his left arm. “I told you there would always be risk.”
A barely perceptible murmur went through the other commanders, a ripple of shifting armor and shuffling feet.
The blue-black of Arneus’ eyes went liquid with frenzy and he stepped up to Nazrak, stood toe-to-toe with the Fey as he seethed. “Have a care how you address your Shaedar, Grand Aga. You have, after all, just failed Him spectacularly.”
Nazrak, stone-faced, offered Arneus a bow of obeisance.
“Explain, then,” Arneus bit out.
Nazrak stiffened his spine and stared blankly forward in parade ground precision and cool. “The fault lies with the Irregulars.” He had to raise his voice over more murmurs, some of them growing angered. “When they mobbed the breach their disorganization—and ensuing panic—was far greater than expected.”
“It was your idea to have them at the spearhead,” Arneus replied icily.
“They were overzealous, Greatness,” Nazrak said with an indifferent shrug. “They were to have dammed the moat and secured crossing, not assaulted the breach. Frenzy got the better of them. They disrupted the advance of my Janizzaries, stalled many of them out in the open.”
“Then bring me their leadership and their heads will serve as my footrest.”
Nazrak glanced once behind him as murmurs increased. He met Arneus’ gaze like he was standing up to enemy fire. “If only we could, Greatness, but most of their commanders are either dead or deserted. And I fear by morning, many of the surviving Irregulars will have melted away into the countryside, too.”
