The Bloodbound (34 page)

She scanned the tower. A handful of guards prowled the ramparts between pointed merlons capped with fearsome iron spikes. She saw movement through a high window, but lower down, the arrow slits were dark and empty. From this angle, she could see nothing of the entrance.

She rejoined the others. “There's no way to get near the gate without being seen. If we go along the top of the walls, we'll be spotted from the ramparts. We might sneak in from the south, but then we'd have to explain what we were doing on the wrong side of the gate. And if we keep to the northern side, the rear lines will spot us and wonder what we're doing scurrying like rats.”

Green didn't like what he was hearing. His customary frown darkened into a scowl. “What do you propose, then?”

“I have an idea, but we'll have to double back to where I killed that last soldier . . .”

It was a nasty bit of business, but Alix didn't see any alternative, so she squeezed her eyes shut and did her best not to retch. By the time they were done, she was so covered in gore that her own brother wouldn't have recognised her. They hid her hair under the dead man's helm, her shape under his too-big cuirass. She draped an arm over Liam's shoulders, another over Green's, and they were off.

Alix played the part from a long way out, in case any stray eyes should see. Liam and Green half dragged, half carried her toward the old temple road, moving as quickly as the deception would allow, and it wasn't long before they came within sight of the enemy lines.
This is it
, Alix thought. Her guts squirmed, and her tongue was dry and bitter in her mouth. If this didn't work . . .
Fifty thousand to three. Awfully long odds.

Heads started to turn as they reached the old temple road, but the sight of a mangled soldier being dragged back toward camp did not arouse suspicion. Most spared them only a cursory glance before turning their attention back to the smoke and thunder in the near distance, where the thralls and their siege engines battered the city walls. A few more soldiers were coming up the road in twos and threes—officers, presumably—but most paid them no more attention than the rank and file. Only one called out a question, but he sounded more curious than suspicious, and Arran Green's curt response of “Flying rock” seemed to satisfy him; he just nodded and continued on his way. It was almost enough to make Alix believe in the gods.

But the real test was only just beginning. The gate loomed over them now, spilling a broad shadow over the flagstones. They could see little beyond the mouth of the tunnel. The imperial walls had been built at the top of an incline, the better to defend against invaders, so the tunnel beneath sloped quickly out of view. That made it impossible for Alix and the others to see what they were about to walk into, but on the plus side, it also shielded them from prying eyes on the temple road.

“Here we go,” Liam said in an undertone as they started down the slope.

The tunnel was empty, thank the Virtues, except for a pair of guards flanking the door to the tower. Unlike the others, however, these men were immediately suspicious; Alix saw them poise their spears before she let her head loll forward, playing up her injuries.

One of the guards barked out a question. Arran Green kept his answer terse, so they wouldn't notice his accent. “Need help,” he said, gesturing at the tower. “The priests.” The guard wasn't impressed. He said something harsh and pointed down the road with his spear. “Need help,” Green repeated, dragging Alix right up to the door, one hand surreptitiously reaching for the dagger at his belt. The guard started to say something else (probably “Are you deaf?”) but it ended in a wet gurgle. A heartbeat later, the second guard met the same fate on the point of Liam's dagger. Alix shouldered her way between the dying men and barged through the door. Inside, a young soldier lounged at the foot of the stairs. He barely had time to scramble to his feet before he found a sword in his belly.

“Hurry.” Green dragged one of the bodies inside, Liam the other. Alix shut the door behind them.

Shadows enfolded them, pierced only by a single torch in a sconce near the stairs.
The Priest is up there
, Alix thought, shivering.
Along with his general, and gods know how many dozens of guards.

Green started toward a dim archway along the back wall, motioning for Alix and Liam to follow. The shadows deepened as they ducked through, but there was just enough light to glimpse a short passageway and a ladder, presumably leading up to a murder hole.
This is perfect
, Alix thought. No one had any reason to come back here, and it was too dark to see from the entryway. Green obviously agreed, for he shrugged out of his pack.

Alix's hands shook as she unlaced her own pack and upended it, the powder sliding out with a soft
hiss
. By the time all three of them were done, they had a pile thigh high. They packed it down the way Gwylim had showed them. And then it was time.

Liam opened his mouth to say something, but Arran Green silenced him with a gesture and jerked his head toward the archway. Liam hesitated. He pursed his lips and shifted from foot to foot, a look of pure anguish in his eyes. Then he flung his arms around the commander general. Green stood stiff as a board, stunned and annoyed and apparently at a loss. He extricated himself after a moment, but even as one hand shoved Liam away, the other clapped him on the shoulder in what was, for Green, an effusive gesture of affection. For Alix he had only a grave nod. Then he pointed at the door, his eyes every bit as commanding as his voice. Liam might have hesitated longer, but Alix grabbed his hand and pulled. They had to get out before they were discovered. Every moment they lost put the mission in jeopardy, cost Kingsword lives.

No one troubled them on the far side of the tunnel. The few Oridians they passed took one look at Alix's bloodied form and concluded that Liam was bringing her to the healers. It was easy to lose themselves among the deserted tents and slip back through the ruins of the imperial wall. They followed it all the way to the crumbling stair to nowhere before Alix said, “Stop. We can watch from here.”

They climbed up and flattened themselves along the top of the wall. Alix watched the guards on the tower ramparts for any sign of alarm, but they moved casually, as if nothing were amiss. She breathed a sigh of relief.

They waited. Alix burned with impatience. Every moment seemed like hours. She wasn't the only one: Liam scratched at the rock under his fingers, his jaw twitching. “Is it me, or is this taking too long?”

More time passed.
What is he waiting for? He was only supposed to count to five hundred . . .

“What's that?” Liam raised himself up on his elbows. “What are they doing?”

Something was happening on the ramparts. The guards clustered together, jostling excitedly. Between them, Alix caught a glimpse of a figure with his arms wrenched behind his back.

Merciful gods.

Liam made a strangled sound and started to rise, but Alix clutched at his tunic. “We can't help him.” Liam subsided, gripping the stone wall so hard that his knuckles went white.

The gatehouse guards marched Arran Green to the edge of the ramparts. For a horrible moment, Alix feared they meant to fling him through the crenels, but instead they held him there, facing him out toward the city, toward the carnage.
They know who he is.
The Oridians had the enemy general in their clutches, and they wanted him to watch his men being slaughtered. Green stood straight and stoic, his head tilted proudly as though the sight gave him courage.

One of the guards drew his blade. Someone grabbed Green by the hair, jerking his head back to expose his throat. Alix started to look away, but it happened too fast—the blade flashed, and a gout of blood erupted from Green's throat. His knees buckled, and he sank out of view.

Liam scrambled to his feet. Alix started to reach for him, but she froze, transfixed. The guards weren't finished yet. The sword flashed again. It came down in a bloody arc, once, twice, each blow exciting a cheer from the enemy soldiers gathered around. The executioner stooped, vanishing behind the ramparts, only to reappear with a severed head dripping with gore.
Not Green's
, Alix thought, irrationally.
It can't be Green's.
But there was no mistaking the meticulously close-cropped beard, even at this distance. The guard climbed up between the merlons and mounted the head on one of the iron spikes, twisting it to face the city walls in the distance.

“No!”

Liam's cry went unheard amid the cheers of the tower guards. Alix grabbed his tunic and yanked him back down. They couldn't be seen. Not now.

They had work to do.

E
rik tried not to think. He let his limbs move automatically, lunging and blocking, slashing and parrying, keeping light on his feet to cope with the chaos around him. He had long since lost track of Rona Brown, not to mention most of his knights. They had fallen back almost to the river by now, and their ranks grew more and more disorganised. It was all Erik could do to have his commands heard. Not that he had given many since the gates fell; it was every man for himself now.

He threw his shield up to block an incoming blow, answering with a cut that crashed through helm and bone and brain. No sooner had the thrall gone down than two more stepped in to take his place, closing in from either side. Erik coiled and waited. Both of them lunged at once, and Erik sprang back, letting their blades cross before he dove back in. He hacked an arm off at the shoulder, relieving one thrall of his sword before turning his attention to the other. He kept the one-armed thrall at bay with his shield while he drove at the more dangerous foe, battering away until he found the soft space between cuirass and spaulder. Chain mail parted before his bloodblade, and he gave the weapon a sharp twist before withdrawing it, just to be sure. After that, the one-armed thrall was easy. Erik felled him with a single blow.

He paused, his gaze flitting over the scene. For the moment, they were holding off the enemy advance; only a trickle of white-hairs made it through the front lines, and they did not make it far. Erik slung his sword back in its scabbard and propped his hands on his thighs, grateful for the chance to catch his breath.

“Your Majesty!” A runner appeared, shoving his way through the men.

Thank the gods.
It had been too long since Erik had news of the other gates. “Tell me.”

“Lord Black reports that the east gate is holding, sire.”

“Good. And the others?”

“I'm sorry, sire, I don't know.”

Erik nodded, dismissing him. The ranks were tightening up again, under the instruction of Rona Brown, who had somehow reappeared. Erik weaved his way through them, heading for the riverbank and a look at the north gate. He reached the foot of the bridge and peered across. The view was not as clear as he had hoped; smoke smudged the skyline on the right bank. He could see movement, but little else.
I should dispatch a runner . . .

Screams sounded from the ramparts. Erik whipped around. “
They're over the walls!
” someone cried. Erik saw them now: white-hairs flowing between the merlons and hacking their way through the archers. The siege towers had made it to the walls. Swearing viciously, Erik drew his sword and rushed forward.

He had scarcely made it through the rear lines before more shouts sounded, this time from the river. He lost a moment to indecision before running back the way he had come.

Please, don't let it be . . .

But it was. Thralls were flooding across the bridge.
The north gate is down. Dear gods, the city is falling, and I am outflanked.
He struggled to suppress the dread rising inside him. He had to stay strong for the men.

“Your Majesty!” Another runner appeared, eyes wild with fear. “Terrible news!”

“I can see that,” Erik snapped. “Brown's lines are overrun.”

The runner shook his head frantically. “I've not come from Lord Brown. I've come from the watchtower!”

The watchtower, where Erik had posted men to keep an eye on the Elders' Gate. He sucked in a breath. “Does the Elders' Gate still stand?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Then
what
?”

“We saw . . . with the longlens . . .” The boy swallowed hard.

Erik's heart fluttered like a weak, wounded thing. He knew, somehow, what the runner was going to say, knew it with the certainty of a man living out his own nightmares.

“General Green is dead.”

Erik squeezed his eyes shut. For a brief moment he was back at Boswyck, watching helplessly as his army was butchered while they waited for reinforcements that would never come. He could smell the snow, feel the icy sting of the wind against his skin. He prayed that it would make him numb. Then the shouts of his men wrenched him back to the present, to his duty. His moment of self-indulgence was over. It was time to lead.

“To the bridge!” He pointed with his sword. “Five bands!” Fifty men ought to be enough. The bridge was barely wide enough to permit a pair of oxcarts to pass one another. All they had to do was choke off the foot of the bridge and pin the enemy out over the water, where they would be easy prey for the archers. Erik still had three companies of longbows waiting in reserve, and they would do more good at the bridge than on the walls, where they were little more than fodder for enemy swords and spears. He called to their commander, and she shouted out an order he could not hear. Her archers moved as one.

“Shield wall!” Erik cried. “They must not cross the bridge!”

Infantry formed up shoulder to shoulder at the foot of the bridge, hunkering low with their shields overlapping like the scales of some great wooden reptile. The tactic was better suited for pikemen, but Erik needed to keep his pikes in reserve for the Oridian cavalry. The enemy horse had not yet charged the gates, but it was only a matter of time.

The first wave of thralls had reached the foot of the bridge. They crashed into the shield wall and broke apart like so much human shrapnel. Some were shoved into the water, while others fell to Kingsword blades darting out between gaps. “Forward!” Erik ordered. “Drive them back!” If they could keep the wall tight enough, they could turn a swordfight into a shoving match, and let the river do the rest.

The Kingswords leaned into their shields and scuttled slowly forward, inch by agonising inch. Behind them, a second line began to form up, in case the first should be breached. Meanwhile, thralls continued to surge across the bridge. A knot of them heaved against the shield wall, so many that those at the edges spilled into the rushing waters below. The white-hairs wore too much armour to keep afloat; most did not even try, sinking passively to their doom without so much as a gasp. A crowd piled up, several score deep, stretching back nearly to the half span. As Erik had predicted, they made an easy target for the archers. Volley after volley of arrows arced over the shield wall to slam into the thicket of thralls. The bridge soon grew cluttered with their dead.

Erik ordered a third shield wall to form up behind the second.
That ought to keep them busy for a while.
Satisfied that the line would hold, he handed over command of the bridge and raced back to the walls.

The ramparts were a maelstrom of swords and arrows and death. The archers had fallen back to the towers, from whence they continued to pepper the siege towers and the thralls teeming outside the gates. Kingsword infantry choked the stairs and the wall walk, trying to keep those thralls that had gained the walls from making it down to the courtyard. Below, Kingsword cavalry hacked at the enemy foot soldiers, keeping the bulk of them at bay.

Erik tightened his grip on his sword and squared his shoulders. He did not dare to think about Arran Green, what his fate meant for Liam and Alix, and for all of them. For now, there was only this battle, these gates, this one duty that lay in his charge. As always, he knew his part, and he would play it.

A thrall was bearing down on him, its dead eyes fixed on him with singular focus. Calmly, Erik turned to face his enemy.

*   *   *

Alix darted through
a gap in the rubble to where Liam waited, crouched behind the remains of the imperial wall. “They're moving out,” she said between short breaths. “I think they've breached the gates.”

Liam just nodded. He hadn't said a word since they had seen Arran Green's head mounted on a spike, his face turned toward the city walls so the defenders might see what had become of their mighty general. He followed Alix's lead efficiently enough, but he seemed half in a daze, his eyes as expressionless as a thrall's. Alix wasn't faring much better. Her head buzzed and throbbed as though a swarm of stinging wasps had been set loose inside her skull, but she did her best to keep going, putting one foot in front of the other as they weaved their way back through the ruins toward the Elders' Gate.

She slipped back through the gap and along the inside of the wall, scurrying in fits and starts like a mouse trying to avoid the keen eyes of a hawk. The enemy column had moved up the road, but there might be other eyes about, and without Green, they were more vulnerable than ever. If they failed, there would be no one to take their place, no one to light the powder and bring down the gate . . .

I can't do this
, she thought as they moved through the shattered bones of the ancient city.
I don't want to die. But if I don't . . .

That was the thought that kept her going, that drove her steps in a determined, if unsteady, rhythm. If she had been on her own, she might not have found the strength to walk willingly to her doom. But she wasn't on her own. Liam was here, and if she didn't do this thing, he would. He would do it, and he would die, and then she would have to live with the knowledge that her cowardice had killed him. Better to die a hundred deaths than suffer that fate.

They could see the old temple road now, and the dwindling shapes of the rear lines as the enemy advanced toward the broken city gates. The wind carried a distant song of steel and screams. Just ahead, the Elders' Gate loomed. Alix could almost feel Arran Green's gaze upon them.

It's time.

She crouched behind a low ridge of stone that might once have been the wall of a temple. Liam tucked in beside her. Alix swallowed the quivering knot in her throat and said, “You stay here.”

That
punctured through the haze quickly enough. “No,” Liam said, so harshly that Alix winced. “I'm the one who's going.”

She'd known he would protest, and she was ready for it. “I'm more likely to get in without being seen, and besides, I—”

“
No.
You can stop right now, Allie, because you're not going to talk your way around me. Not this time.”

“Liam, please. This is bigger than us. They found Green, which means they've probably posted more guards. They probably found the powder too. I doubt they'll know what to make of it, but still . . .”

His jaw set in that stubborn cast that reminded her of Erik. “If they've set more guards, then you'll have no chance of getting in there unseen. In which case it's fighting we'll need, and I'm the better fighter.”

That sounded perilously logical, but Alix ploughed on regardless. “We don't have time to argue about this. I'm going. I have Gwylim's darts, remember?” She showed him one of the tiny needles resting in the moist hollow of her palm. She hoped he didn't notice her shaking.

Liam slipped a hand around the back of her head and pulled her close, resting his forehead against hers. She felt the warmth of his skin, the whisper of his breath on her lips.
Never again . . .
Her chest clenched so tightly that it was all she could do to breathe.

“For once in your life, listen to me,” he said. “I can do this. I
have
to do this. I could never live with myself if—”

“And you think I could?”

“You'll be all right. Erik will . . . He'll take care of you.”

“I don't need Erik to take care of me. I need you.”

He sighed. “Well, that's not going to happen, is it? I'm sorry, Allie. For everything. Just promise me . . . Promise me you won't forget.”

He's not going to let me go. Not unless . . .

“All right.” She spoke in a whisper so he wouldn't hear the sob battering at her ribs, trying to break through. “There's no more time to argue . . .”

He pulled back, his gaze soft with regret. “Time. We wasted so much of it. I should have told you every moment of every day . . .”

“Just go, before I change my mind.” Her fingers curled around the dart, moving it subtly into position.
All he has to do is look away . . .
The fear drained from her then, replaced by a strange calm. He would hate her for this, but one day, when the war was over and he had a wife and children and a long and happy life before him, he would forgive her, and that would be enough.

He smiled. Tears shone in his eyes. “You didn't really think I was going to fall for that, did you?” He brushed her face gently, and suddenly she realised that his other hand was tucked into the pouch at his belt. She read it in his eyes a moment before he struck.

They lunged at the same time. Only one of them drew blood.

*   *   *

Erik fell back
again. The thralls were everywhere, swarming over the Kingsword ranks in a relentless tide. His arm ached, and his grip was slick with blood. His shield was splintered almost beyond use. There were so many bodies in the street—Aldenian, Andithyrian, Oridian—that he stumbled as he fought. It would not be long now. There was no place for tactics anymore, no prospect of retreat. It ended here, one way or another. Erik could sense despair descending on the men, slowing their hearts and weakening their limbs.

He was about to call for a new shield when a strange
crack
sounded in the distance. Erik barely registered it, but a heartbeat later, it was followed by an earthy rumbling sound, a low, steady thunder unlike anything he had ever heard. On and on it went, like the pounding of a hundred thousand hooves, and then abruptly it was gone. Erik paused, his mind groping through the fog of battle. Something important had just happened, but for a moment it eluded him, as though he were grasping at the fading wisps of a half-remembered dream.

Someone bumped his shoulder. A thrall. Erik raised his blade, but the man had already moved beyond his reach, heading for the gates at a flat-out run. He did not make it far; one of Erik's knights cut him down. Others were running too, Erik saw. Dozens of them. More. All around him, thralls were scattering, in every direction at once.
Retreating
, Erik thought, but no—this was not organised enough to be a retreat. They were
fleeing
. Those that were not running just stood there, stunned, blinking in confusion as though they did not even know where they were. Some threw their weapons down. Others began to scream and clutch at wounds as though they had only just discovered the pain. Still, it took Erik a moment to process what was happening.