He shielded his men and made them fight toe-to-toe when the castle creatures
closed. Most of his men were killed, but they wiped out their attackers.
By then the castle creatures were mounting a sortie against the trench and wall,
directly toward where I stood watching. I recall being more puzzled than
fearful.
How many were there? Shed had given the impression the castle was practically
untenanted. But a good twenty-five of them, attacking with wizardry backing
them, made the trench and wall almost pointless.
They came out the gate. And something came over the castle wall, vast and
bladder-like. It hit the ground, bounded twice, mashed down on the trench and
palisade, crushing one and filling the other. The sortie streaked for the
opening. Those creatures could move.
The Limper came down out of the night, shrieking with the fury of his descent,
glowing ever more brightly as he dropped. The glow peeled off in flakes the size
of maple seeds, which fluttered in his wake, spinning and twisting earthward,
eating into whatever they contacted. Four or five attackers went down.
The Lieutenant launched a hasty counterattack, finished several of the injured,
then had to retreat. Several of the creatures dragged fallen soldiers toward the
castle. The others came on.
Without a heroic bone in my body, I picked up my heels and headed across the
slope. And a wise move that proved.
The air crackled and sparked and opened like a window. Something poured through
from somewhere else. The slope froze so cold and so fast the air itself turned
to ice. The air around me rushed into the affected area, and it too froze. The
cold took most of the castle creatures, enveloping them in frost. A random
javelin struck one. The creature shattered, turning to powder and small shards.
Men hurled whatever missiles were available, destroying the others.
The opening closed after only a few seconds. The relative warmth of the world
sapped the bitter cold. Fogs boiled up, concealed the area for several minutes.
When they cleared, no trace of the creatures could be found.
Meantime, three untouched creatures raced down the road toward Juniper. Elmo and
an entire platoon raged in pursuit. Above, the Limper passed the apex of a climb
and descended for a strike upon the fortress. As another band of creatures came
out.
They grabbed up whatever bodies they could and hurried back. Limper adjusted his
descent and hit them. Half went down. The others dragged at least a dozen dead
men inside.
A pair of those flying balls came shrieking across from Duretile and impacted
the castle wall, hurling up a shield of color. Another carpet dropped behind
Limper. It released something which plunged into the black castle. There was a
flash so brilliant it blinded people for miles around. I was facing away at the
moment, but, even so, fifteen seconds passed before my vision recovered enough
to show me the fortress afire.
This was not the shifting fire we had seen earlier. This was more like a
conflagration actually consuming the stuff of the fortress itself. Strange
screams came from inside. They set chills crawling my spine. They were screams
not of pain but of rage. Creatures appeared on the battlements, flailing away
with what looked like cats-o'-nine-tails. extinguishing the flames. Wherever the
flames had burned, the fortress was visibly diminished.
A steady stream of ball pairs howled across the valley. I do not see that they
contributed anything, yet I'm sure there was purpose behind them.
A third carpet dropped while Limper and the other were climbing. This one
trailed a cloud of dust. Wherever the dust touched, it had an effect like
Limper's maple seeds, only generalized. Exposed castle creatures shrieked in
agony. Several seemed to melt. The others abandoned the walls. Events proceeded
in like fashion for quite a while, with the black castle appearing to get the
worst of it. Yet they had gotten those bodies inside, and I suspected that meant
trouble.
Sometime during all this Asa made a getaway. I was unaware of it. So was
everyone else, till hours later, when Pawnbroker spotted him going into the Iron
Lily. But Pawnbroker was a good distance away, and the Lily was doing a booming
business despite the hour, with everyone who could gathered for drinks while
watching the fury on the north ridge. Pawnbroker lost him in the mob. I expect
Asa spoke to Shed's sister-in-law and learned that he, too, had escaped. We
never had time to interview her.
Meantime, the Lieutenant was getting things under control.
He had the casualties cleared away from the break in the circumvallation. He
moved ballistae into position to fire into any further break-out attempt. He had
pit traps dug, sent laborers around to replace those One-Eye had lost.
The Taken continued their harassment of the castle, though at a more leisurely
pace. They had shot their best bolls early.
The occasional pair of balls howled over from Duretile.
I later learned that Silent was throwing them, having been taught by the Taken.
The worst of it seemed over. Except for the three escap-ees Elmo was hunting, we
had contained the thing. The Limper peeled off to join the hunt for the three.
Whisper returned to Duretile to refurbish her store of nasty tricks, Feather
patrolled above the castle, dipping down occasion-ally when its denizens came
out to battle the last consum-ing flames. Relative peace had returned.
Nobody rested, though. Bodies had been hauled inside. We all wondered if they
had gleaned enough to bring the Dominator through.
But they were up to something else in there.
A group of creatures appeared on the wall, setting up a device pointing
down-slope. Feather dove.
Bam! Smoke boiled around her, illuminated from within. She came out wobbling.
Bam! And bam! again. And thrice more still. And after the last she could no
longer hold it. She was afire, a comet arcing up, out, away, and down into the
city. A violent explosion occurred where she hit. In moments a savage
conflagration raged upon the waterfront. The fire spread swiftly among the
tightly packed tenements.
Whisper was out of Duretile and hitting the black castle in minutes, with the
vicious dust that melted and the fire that burned the stuff of the fortress
itself. There was an intensity to her flying that betrayed her anger over
Feather's fall.
The Limper, meantime, broke off hunting escapees to help fight the fire in the
Buskin. With his aid it was controlled within hours. Without him the entire
district might have burned.
Elmo got two of the fugitives. The third vanished utterly. When the hunt resumed
with the help of the Taken, no trace could be found.
Whisper maintained her attack till she exhausted her resources. That came well
after sunrise. The fortress looked more like a giant hunk of slag than a castle,
yet she had not overcome it. One-Eye, when he came around seeking more tools,
told me there was plenty of activity inside.
JUNIPER: THE CALM
I caught a two-hour nap. The Lieutenant allowed half the troops and workers the
same, then the other half. When I wakened, I found few changes, except that the
Captain had sent Pockets over to establish a field hospital. Pockets had been
down in the Buskin, trying to win friends with free medical attention. I looked
in, found only a handful of patients and the situation under control, went on to
check the siegework.
The Lieutenant had repaired the gap in the palisade and trench. He had extended
both, intending to take them all the way around, despite the difficulty of the
nether slope. New, heavier missile weapons were under construction.
He was not content to rely upon the Taken to reduce the place. He did not trust
them to do the necessary.
Sometime during my brief sleep, drafts of Candy's prisoners came up. But the
Lieutenant did not permit the civilians to leave. He put them to gathering earth
while he scoped out a site for building a ramp.
I suggested, “You'd better get some sleep.”
“Need to ride herd,” he said. He had a vision. His talent had gone unused for
years. He wanted this. I suspect he found the Taken an irritation, despite the
formidable nature of the black castle.
“It's your show,” I said. “But you won't be much good if they hit back and
you're too exhausted to think straight.”
We were communicating on a level outside words. Weariness had us all fragmented
and choppy, neither our thoughts nor actions nor speech moving logically or
linearly. He nodded curtly. “You're right.” He surveyed the slope. “Seems to be
clicking. I'll go down to the hospital. Have somebody get me if something
happens.”
The hospital tent was the nearest place out of the sun. It was a bright, clear,
intense day, promising to be unseasonably warm. I looked forward to that. I was
tired of shivering. “Will do.”
He was right about things running smoothly. They usually do once the men know
what has to be done.
From the viewpoint of the Limper, who again had the air patrol, the slope must
have looked like an overturned anthill. Six hundred Company troops were
supervising the efforts of ten times as many men from the city. The road uphill
carried so much traffic it was being destroyed. Despite the night's excitement
and their lack of sleep, I found the men in excellent spirits.
They had been on the march so long, doing nothing else, that they had developed
a big store of violent energy. It was pouring out now. They worked with an
eagerness which infected the locals. Those seemed pleased to participate in a
task which required the concerted efforts of thousands. Some of the more
thoughtful mentioned that Juniper had mounted no major communal effort in
generations. One man suggested that that was why the city had gone to seed. He
believed the Black Company and its attack on the black castle would be great
medicine for a moribund body politic.
That, however, was not a majority opinion. Candy's prisoners, especially,
resented being used as a labor force. They represented a strong potential for
trouble.
I have been told I always look at the dark underbelly of tomorrow. Possibly.
You're less likely to be disappointed that way.
The excitement I expected did not materialize for days. The castle creatures
seemed to have pulled their hole in after them. We eased the pace slightly,
ceased working as if everything had to be done before tomorrow.
The Lieutenant completed the circumvallation, including the back slope, looping
around One-Eye's excavation. He then broke the front wall and began building his
ramp. He did not use many mantlets, for he designed it to provide its own
shielding. It rose steeply at our end, with steps constructed of stone from
demolished buildings. The work crews downtown were now pulling down structures
ruined in the fire following Feather's crash. There were more materials than
could be used in the siege. Candy's outfit was salvaging the best to use in new
housing planned for the cleared sites.
The ramp would rise till it overtopped the castle by twenty feet, then it would
descend to the wall. The work went faster than I expected. So did One-Eye's
project. He found a combination of spells which turned stone soft enough to be
worked easily. He soon reached a point beneath the castle.
Then he ran into the material that looked like obsidian. And could go no
farther. So he started spreading out.
The Captain himself came over. I had been wondering what he was doing. I asked.
“Finding ways to keep people busy,” he said. He shambled around erratically. If
we did not pay attention, we found ourselves wandering off after he made some
sudden turn and went to inspect something apparently trivial. “Damned Whisper is
turning me into a military governor.”
“Uhm?”
“What, Croaker?”
“I'm the Annalist, remember? Got to get this all down somewhere.”
He frowned, eyeballed a barrel of water set aside for animals. Water was a
problem. A lot had to be hauled to augment the little we caught during the
occasional shower. “She has me running the city. Doing what the Duke and city
fathers should.” He kicked a rock and said nothing more till it stopped rolling.
“Guess I'm coping. Isn't anybody in town who isn't working. Aren't getting paid
anything but keep, but they're working. Even got people lined up with projects
they want done as long as we're making people work. The Custodians are driving
me crazy. Can't tell them all their clean-ups may be pointless.”
I caught an odd note in that. It underscored a feeling I'd had already, that he
was depressed about what was happening.
“Why's that?”
He glanced around. No natives were within earshot. “Just a guess, mind. Nobody's
put it in words. But I think the Lady plans to loot the Catacombs.”
“People aren't going to like that.”
“I know. You know; I know; even Whisper and Limper know. But we don't give the
orders. There's talk about how the Lady is short of money.”
In all the years we'd been in her service we'd never missed a payday. The Lady
played that straight. The troops got paid, be they mercenaries or regulars. I
suspect the various outfits could tolerate a few delays. It's almost a tradition
for commanders to screw their troops occasionally.
Most of us didn't much care about money, anyway. We tended toward inexpensive
and limited tastes. I suppose attitudes would shift if we had to do without,
though.
“Too many men under arms on too many frontiers,” the Captain mused. “Too much
expansion too fast for too long. The empire can't take the strain. The effort in
the Barrowland ate up her reserves. And it's still going. If she whips the
Dominator, look for things to change.”