Raveler: The Dark God Book 3 (27 page)

“You know how long it will take to evacuate this army over a couple of ladders?”

“Quicker than with no ladders,” Shim said. “I assume you told them to hurry.”

“Aye,” Eresh said.

At that moment, another man walked up from the river bank with a few dogmen in tow.

A murmur rose up from the men on the walls.

Shim narrowed his eyes.

“What in Regret’s name?” Argoth asked.

On the road to the river stood Flax, blond hair shining in the sun. Behind him were a number of dogmen pushing Varro and the others bound before them.

“I knew it,” Eresh said. “Rot the Six! Rot their eyes! Rot their unmanly worms and their children! I should have skewered him the first day.” He looked at Argoth and Shim, his one good eye burning with fury. “Maybe next time you’ll listen to sense.”

Then the warhorns of Mokad sounded at the edge of the field, and the first of their foot soldiers marched onto the clearing to form up their battles.

24

Stone Giants

MOKAD CAME SINGING, their war song booming across the field, the dust of their march blowing in with them.

“Tell the men to ready themselves,” Shim said.

His hornsman blew the order. Down in the courtyard, the men hurried to finish filling the last of their bags. Others began to move back to take their positions in the caves or shelter of the hoodoos. The deer Argoth had first seen crowded in one corner by the horses.

“I’ll check on the firelances,” Argoth said.

“You do that,” Shim said, his voice filled with the gravel of anger and frustration.

Eresh turned around. “What can they do to us?” he shouted at the soldiers in the courtyard below. “Fart on us with their wind? The skir winds will blow, but the maggots out on the ground will have to come meet us man to man. And we will slaughter them on the walls. We will slaughter them at the gates. Dreadmen! Put on your weaves of might and prepare yourselves! Today, Regret will swallow up the men of Mokad.”

“Well spoken,” Shim said. “Now we have but one course. We need you back at the ladders, Master Kish. Open the way into the mountains.”

“I would rather blood Mokad.”

“Take this victory away from that vile traitor.”

Eresh grimaced, then left the parapet and stormed across the courtyard to oversee things in the passageway.

Argoth had no idea how long they’d have to hold, so he checked on the teams that would operate the firelances, making sure their gear was secure in the pits dug against the wall, and asking their leaders to drill the race to the top of the battlement when the winds left. He noticed Lord Hardy and Vance were ordering their own men. As they did, the army of Mokad arrayed itself on the field outside the fort.

Men had been making their way to void their bowels in the remnants of the garderobes and over the sides of the walls. But with the dread falling upon them, more men were making their way. Soon the men would have to soil the ground where they stood, for there would be no time in battle to run to the jacks. Fighting also made the throat dry, and a group of men were hauling up water from the old well and filling goat skins.

One group of men were igniting braids of cured godsweed and putting them in small clay pipes they hung from cords about their necks. Another bunch from Bain were chewing the weed, even though the juice could make a man violently ill, and smearing the masticated chew in stripes over their armor and faces and mixing it in their hair. There were other men with sendings of various sorts, and they began taking these out, muttering prayers and blowing their calls to the ancestors. There was a group of men in Vance’s ranks with ties back to the old country who were stomping out a war chant meant to invite the power of the old gods of their lands that they claimed to be descended from.

Argoth had his own sending, but he refrained from blowing it because he did not want the men to think he’d given up hope. As he walked back, a fistman asked him how many men Mokad had brought.

A number of the soldiers in the area turned to listen to the answer.

Argoth raised his voice. “Not enough, the poor whoresons. They fear us. Don’t you forget that. They have brought a coalition because they fear us. They know they can’t beat us on their own.”

“But what about the skir?” another man asked.

“The earth will protect you from their skir,” he said. “Then it will be man against man. And there is nothing out there we cannot kill.”

“But their numbers.”

“You don’t have to fight them all at once. Only so many can approach the gates. And they only have so many ladders to scale the walls. You fight them one at a time. You knock down the man in front of you until there are no more men left to knock down.”

The soldiers looked at each other a bit dubious.

Argoth smiled broadly. “Years hence, warriors in foreign lands will talk of this day. Of this battle. The children of your grandchildren will tell your stories and how you beat back the army of the Devourers. They are ants. Squash them under your feet.”

“I wish we had just a little ale to fortify us,” one of the men said.

“Without the wagons, there was no room for ale,” Argoth said. “But we will have plenty of ale to drink every night throughout this winter. Fortify yourself with thoughts of your ancestors and of the sons and daughters who will call you blessed.”

He could see a few of the men nodding.

“Those who would eat your fathers and mothers and children are at the doors. Show them your anger. Show them your teeth. Show them what it means to fight mankind.”

Many more in the area had turned to listen to his words, and he could see apprehensive fear. But in many more of their eyes was the angry resolve of men ready to kill to protect what was theirs.

Argoth looked at their trenches. They were dug wide enough for a man to lie down in. They were deep enough to stand a shield up on its side. “Are your sacks all ready?”

“Aye, Zu.”

And they were. Each sack had handles on it. The men would lie down in their trenches next to their shields, their weapons with them. One heavy sack of earth would cover their legs, another their upper body. The sacks were about fifty or sixty pounds each, and only the strongest of winds could reach down into the trench to wrench the sack out of a man’s hands. Until that time the sack would protect them from the glass and stone teeth of the wind.

“What about Flax?” a man said.

“Flax was one man,” Argoth said. “And it was not he who bested the champion of the dogmen. It was our own Kish. Flax will die with the rest of them.”

Out on the field, the army of Mokad let out a cheer, thousands of voices strong, that sounded like the rushing of great waters.

“They are ants!” Argoth shouted. “Today is our day! Today mankind rises.”

Then he continued back to the battlement where Shim stood and saw the armies of Mokad upon the field. The battles of Nilliam and Urz formed up to the right. Mokad in the middle. And the river on the left. They were a terrible sight to behold, their colored banners waving lazily in the breeze. Behind them at the river, a number of ships had tied up to the moorings.

“What were they hollering about?” Argoth asked.

“Over there,” Shim said and pointed.

Out on the field, a team of horses paraded a wagon in front of the troops. On its bed was a cage made with stout timbers and iron bars, a sleth cage. Inside the cage was a boy.

“Legs,” Argoth said. “Is that Legs?”

“I think so,” said Shim. “Who else would it be? He was seen last with Flax. You know what they’re doing, don’t you? It’s the lie they’re going to build. The sleth children who subverted Shim. The great masterminds. It’s all a show.”

“I don’t see Sugar. Is there another wagon?”

“Only the one.”

“Maybe our spies were wrong,” Argoth said. “Maybe she wasn’t caught back at Blue Towers.”

Eresh said, “Or maybe they’re parading her through the rest of the land. Building up a big anticipation for an execution. A public display to show the herds they were now safe from the predators thanks to their gracious Glory and his army.”

A scout atop one of the hoodoos shouted. “Bone Faces!”

Argoth looked out toward the sea. He could only just make out the sails.

Shim cursed and said, “Coming to plunder under our noses while we’re tied up here. I swear to you that when we’ve chased Mokad from our shores, we are going to take the battle to the shores of the Bone Faces. We are going to march on their Kragows and blood their fields and burn their ships until there isn’t one of them left to turn a plow.”

“Such the optimist,” Argoth said.

“Let’s hope they have their eyes set on Blue Towers.”

Argoth shook his head. “I don’t think they’re here for the plunder. They’re too far north.”

“Are we sure they’re not allied with Mokad?” Shim asked.

“Loyal did not seem to be putting on a show when we spoke about it before. So if they’re part of this mob, Nilliam does not know it.”

“Are you sure?”

“No,” Argoth said.

Shim scraped his lip with his teeth a moment. “Regret’s eyes.”

Out on the field, another shout rose from the Mokaddian troops who had formed up by the river road. A few moments later, a team of horses crested the bank, pulling a flatbed wagon with a trestle on it. Over the next few minutes, five more teams pulled up five other wagons from the ships at the river. Two others had the same wooden trestles. The other three carried long beams. The six wagons split into three groups, a beam to each. Then teams of men began to work on them, assembling the pieces.

“Zu,” one of the men on the wall said. “What kind of war engines are those?”

“Stone giants,” Argoth said.

Stone giants were large stone-throwing siege weapons. They worked on the same principles of a staff sling. When assembled, the beam stood in the air on two tall triangular legs, connected by an axle, which ran straight through the beam. Attached to one end of the beam was a huge sling. At the opposite end of the beam hung a heavy box. When the stone giant wasn’t loaded, the counterweighted end of the beam with the box naturally pointed down between the two legs while the head of the beam, to which the sling was attached, rose into the sky. It looked like a giant stick creature with no arms or shoulders standing at attention.

Argoth said, “They’ll fill the box with stones or sand or lead. A number of ton’s worth. The stone giant’s crew will pull the head of the beam down so it’s almost touching the ground, the counterweighted rear end sticking up into the sky. Then the crew will place whatever they want to throw into the sling—a boulder, beehives, a diseased cow. To throw the contents of the sling, the crew simply releases the head. The counterweight, with all its tons of force, swings down. The head swings up, and the sling whips up and around, flinging the missile in a high arc at the target.”

“They’re going to try to bash down a wall?”

“I don’t know what they’re going to do with it,” Argoth said.

As the teams worked to assemble the weapons, more wagons came up from the river carrying other parts. Dozens of men worked on each team and in short order the three stone giants were assembled and stood at attention, the beams rising more than thirty feet into the air.

Still more wagons arrived, this time carrying stones. Then the three wagons with smaller throwing engines that had been used to feed the winds on the plain were pulled up and positioned as well. Six engines in all.

Argoth’s thirst was upon him, and he picked up his waterskin. While he was drinking, a terror of Mokad’s elite dreadmen walked forward of the lines, keeping well out of bowshot. They held a pole with the banner of the Glory of Mokad. Normally this would be the outline of a red eye on a banner of white cloth. But this was the death eye, a yellow eye like a sun with yellow flames on scarlet cloth. The death eye meant they would take no prisoners. They intended to slaughter all within the fort.

The dreadmen paraded the banner up to where the Skir Masters and Flax stood.

“Look at that rotted spy,” Shim said. “Filling them in on our preparations. After the Bone Faces, we hunt him down.”

“Yes, Lord,” Argoth said.

The Skir Masters ended their talks with Flax, and their horn blowers blew a loud cadence. Mokad’s troops cheered again, but they did not move.

“Lord,” one of the captains on Shim’s other side said, “should we have the men take cover?”

“If the whirlwinds come, yes. But we don’t want our men to go to ground if they don’t. Let’s see how they play this,” said Shim.

There were teams of men working each stone giant. They pulled down the heads of the giants, raising the counter weight boxes into the air. Then half a dozen men loaded a squarish gray stone into the sling of each of the stone giants. Probably good hard stone like granite. But the sides were not flat. Argoth knew this for he’d seen such stones before. They had been carved so each surface was concave.

In a siege without skir, the stones would be round because all of the power would have to come from the throwing machines, and so the missiles needed to create as little wind resistance as possible. But with skir it was just the opposite. They needed to be shapes that the wind could easily carry.

Argoth estimated those stones were two to three hundred pounds each. The walls of this fort were not made of solid rock. There were instead two thinner walls of stones a number of feet apart, one on the front and one at the back. In between those two walls was a gap that had been filled with rubble stone and a binder. It was a cheaper way to make a solid wall. But it also meant that as soon as the outer wall was broken, the rubble of the inner wall would be easier to break apart. And three hundred pounds of solid rock would make short work of it.

The team next to the first stone giant finished and stood awaiting a command.

Flax gave a signal.

“Did you see that?” Shim asked.

It would not be the position of a spy to command anything. “Maybe he’s more than a spy,” Argoth replied.

Two men next to the stone giant pulled a thick lever, releasing the beam. The counterweighted end swung down. The head swung up, pulling the sling with it, whipping the stone up and around. Then one end of the big sling slid off its catch on the beam, flinging the heavy stone in a smooth arc into the air. But it wasn’t any kind of trajectory that would send the stone to the fort.

“Ha!” a soldier cried. “It’s going to fall short.”

The stone approached the apex of its arc and looked like it would fall maybe a hundred paces in front of the stone giant.

Jeers erupted from Shim’s men on the walls.

But behind the stone giants the branches of the trees on the opposite bank of the river suddenly whipped back and forth. The face of the river flattened. Spray kicked up. Then the trees on the near side swayed with a heavy wind.

The stone began to fall. The wind blasted past the stone giants and out over the field. A moment later the wind met the stone, and the huge stone jerked forward.

“The skir wind’s got it,” said Argoth. “Now we’ll see their strategy.”

The stone picked up forward momentum and rushed toward the fortress as it fell.