For almost a week I saw nothing of High Command. Those days brought no sign of Rath either; even the nights were eerily quiet. Bound to our northward station, it was just about impossible to keep track of changes or movements down Ergmouth, especially with the tall Trebs of the next unit blocking our southward view. Big Spale was taller of course, but it was far, two miles away; positioned roughly at the centre of the line like a flagship.
All jhendrit units splintered off maintenance teams. Joining ours, I spent those days jogging a stretch of two or three miles with five others of Fifth Pulls; engine to engine with our tools. Nothing was broken yet, not badly, but re-fitting, re-winding, re-tightening, re-greasing and even re-assembling was hard.
Mules weren’t complicated, just “old-fashioned,” not unlike the catapults I knew my own country had used once. Their bulk would quickly weaken wheels and loosen chasses, making the structure sway and wobble as it fired. After the miles of grinding travel, there were many to re-secure and by the second day I could do an axle all by myself.
Pulls were lighter but more complex. Had to move smoothly, always, and so I got to know my own machine much better as I crawled inside their rail-holes – and further in – to grease their ropes and gears and axes.
Springers were the smallest. Light enough to be carried by two jhendra on foot, they fired light and fast and hard, multiple stones flung from a backward-bending arm of supple wood. To keep it supple needed oil made from red resin that sank deep. Soon I stank like Loquar. But having to jog between positions in full heat earned us extra water.
For the Trebs I could do little but caddy tools for other hands; every component to be tweaked or jigged demanding full-grown strength.
As I worked those hours, plastered in sweat and grease and oil, all I could make out on the southeast side were the patrols along some stretches of the line, sometimes the movement of mounted groups, or supply-wagons from Antissa. And even then, through the liquid air, it was hard to make out many details. Voices didn’t carry at this distance either. Though the space was wide and open, it was as if the heat itself consumed them. I played a game with myself; each engine-job I completed earning one glance into the passage. Would I see the Rath in that next glance, loping out of that fierce glare just like they’d done at Calvallagh? Were they ever coming at all?
Over those nights I got to talk more with Taflan than I’d ever had the chance to back in the Deep. Nestled against the dog, we’d lie and talk for as long as we could until telmadhi hushed our voices. She told me about her family, simple mining folk in Chidh Chauri of Methar. Her brother was a soldier, serving now. I told her about my family too, even Con and Jerome. When she learned they were all gone, except Jerome, she didn’t say anything. I didn’t mind that she didn’t. But after that we didn’t talk about our families. Instead we swapped our stories. Those about the mystical Blue Man enchanted her most and she had me tell them a dozen times over.
Then on the sixth night we heard them. All Ergmouth heard them; we saw it wake in a long pattern of blinking, twitching torchlight dots. I knew those cries so well by now, yet every time it took me back – the borderlands that evil night. It was the small hours of the morning, but all eyes were open now, I knew, and all trained uselessly on that blackness out ahead. Would there be orders? Soon there came gibbers and clearer snarls. But no orders. ‘Northerly wind,’ they told us after an hour of nervous waiting. The wind was carrying their noise from leagues away, through the passage funnel; they weren’t coming. Not tonight.
But as I lay down again with Taflan and Tazen, not expecting much sleep, I thought I heard the drum of hoofbeats. And sure enough, I learned next morning, two troops of light cavalry, each to a side of the erg-passage, had ridden out to track the night-crawlers’ location. They’d had no fight and both came back reporting sightings at eight miles. That was where the passage widened most; a kind of valley between the separating erg-belts. No way to know where those Rath had come from.
Back in position with Fifth Pulls – all engines back in peak condition – the silence on Ergmouth was broken at midday. A massive crack, hard to place at first, echoed through the void. As jhendrit and soldier looked southwest, we saw a boulder in the sky. Big Spale had fired.
The boulder soared, a weirdly gradual-looking arc across the blue, I guessed because it was so high; it gave me time to mount our Pull and scan the passage for a target. But they must be too far away, or else the glare had hidden them. Smash! That must be over a mile, I thought, as jhendra hummed with satisfaction at the dust-cloud.
Knots of soldiers milled around us, none to orders. We were at ease. I overheard a passing telmadh: ‘Small stone’s wasted. Spale-load’s the best chance of making big enough vibrations.’
So we were shouting come and get us.
Shading my eyes, I watched the dust-cloud thin out there. Minutes later, Big Spale launched its second giant hunk of rock. Third, fourth and fifth followed soon. There was a break of about an hour, and then again, five boulders launched into the passage, one by one. No other engines joined the fire and by sunset no Rath had come. The stonehold carts crawled across the open for the rubble.
Only after darkness did we hear their chorus rise, louder and clearer. No wind tonight. Two high shouts reached us from the artabh at the Treb-unit station: ‘Firing positions!’ and ‘Front lines!’
Even as my heart leapt to my throat, I moved my legs. Before the first shout was repeated by the foremen of our block, and then the second by soldiers behind us, I willed them forward. To the Pull. And climbed inside.
Maybe because it was night, or maybe because I was cooped inside a hole that blocked my view, that attack comes back a blur. I know they came from the sides, behind us too, not just ahead like they were meant to. I heard screeches from the dune-slopes, then close—so close—around my engine. I heard the human screams that joined them. Crossbow fire and pounding hooves. I know I stayed in my position, manned my post and did my part. I know my cockpit was rotated left and right on its axis; I know my hands moved that heavy hook from rung to rung; I know we fired a dozen times. But I can’t remember the commands I must have heard to have obeyed them. The whole thing, probably, was over in minutes. But when I climbed out of that Pull in a kind of trance, to hear my comrades say it hadn’t been that bad and “only ten” soldiers had died along the full length of the line, I felt I’d been in there all night.
I don’t remember eating, drinking; don’t remember going to sleep. Racked by cold and nervous thoughts, I don’t think I got much of it and, when a column came back from wide reconnaissance at sunrise I was still exhausted. They’d made a circuit of the erg’s eastern surrounds, their fusils firing in an attempt to keep whatever Rath had surfaced moving.
Mounted fusil-jhendrit stormed the passage breadth about three miles north of the line, firing too. That went on all through the boiling day and I started worrying about how much of our contingent’s schot was being wasted without a stone meeting flesh.
Night-crawling Rath made more attacks over the nights that followed, but now defences were always ready and so these never broke the line, no matter which way they came from. In daylight, cavalry and fusil squads took posts on dune-slopes, each small enough to beat a swift retreat if Rath closed quickly.
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Two weeks in, Ergmouth changed shape. It angled out its rightmost edge – our edge – sidelong against the passage. Vortan crossbows and Zeidhan spears reinforced our stations and with those blocks came three squads of fusiliers. That must be most of them, I thought, though I’d lost track of arrivals.
On the fifteenth day of Ergmouth I was called up to Big Spale. A hawk took off from Ferikh Iskandar’s arm when I reached the top. ‘You’re being reassigned,’ said Rusper, chewing khapent. He was noticeably browner.
‘Cos I abandoned my post that time? I didn’t do it again.’
Black lenses found me. ‘What? No, never mind that.’ He did know though. ‘Sixth fusil squad has left the fortress, should be with us by tonight. You’re joining it as surveillance attaché to High Command. Report to Gudgeon. Your unit foreman on the Pulls has been advised to replace you.’
I’d get the fusil I’d asked for. And a more terrifying job with it. But before I left the platform Rusper thumped my arm and said, voice low: ‘It’s working boy, their daylight numbers in the passage are increasing.’ Then: ‘What’s this?’
He snatched my wrist, ogling the bracelet.
‘Nothing.’ I snatched it back and cloaked it with my sleeve; quick enough, I hoped, that he didn’t recognise the charms as Ratheine. I’d been wearing it ever since the formation of the line. Not sure why.
As for predictions about numbers, he was right. The next day, the morning heat was already building in our favour when the far smudge of chalk-white with spots of black bled into view like a great mass of creeping guano. A hawk brought word from ranging cavalry reporting groups sighted that dawn amounting to over three hundred across the farmlands of Verunia.
If that was right, the number reaching us had shrivelled. But it was still more than we’d yet seen at once in daylight. It was hard to judge for myself, what with being stuck on the ground so far away, but it still looked to be something more than two hundred, moving slow. I heard telmadhi guess the same.
Orders to take position were being called all down the line. Engines loading.
‘Florian, to your squad now!’
I’d just been standing and staring but now saw Gudgeon striding through the rushing chaos of arming movement. He pointed furiously at the squads’ red flags.
I found the Sixth and reported, Tazen following at heel, and no sooner were the holstered fusil, chrozite capsule and schot cartridge shoved into my hands than we were jogging south from centre of the line. A block of vortan riders led us at a trot.
I didn’t let my eyes stray north but I could hear them well enough. Still out of range of Trebs and Pulls, but why’d Big Spale not fired yet?
Up ahead, the riders veered off right and led us forward of the line. Into the passage.
Tazen broke into a sprint. If he hadn’t, I’d not have seen there was a station up ahead until the telmadh shouted ‘Teams!’ and the four squads divided up. A line of four elevated jezail-cannons in their frames stood in the void, about ten yards between each. We took the one left from the middle, two engineers manning the cannon on its mount while the rest of us fanned behind a low timber barricade.
I couldn’t really be doing this. Couldn’t really be here; not merely on the front-line, but in front of the front line!
A giant crash shook the earth and me, some of our squads sending a cheer up as I almost yelped with shock. Tazen barked, almost a cheer of his own. Daring a glance, I saw the haze of blasted dust ahead and vaguely, teeming, scattered motions through it. Heard the Trebs and maybe Pulls release their volley. Rocks sailed above us, slammed the earth, each one—I hoped—taking a handful of Rath down under it.
Before I knew it, I was kneeling behind that flimsy plank of wood, my shaking hands loading the schot into the breech of my new fusil, clumsy fingers spilling chrozite on the ground and on myself as I tried to fill the pan up with its charge.
I didn’t dare to look ahead again: the tide kept coming, screaming. Surely charging now.
‘Hey.’
I glanced right and met the next fusilier’s eyes.
‘Easy,’ he said. Calm. A madman. Fusil in hand, he bit the glove off his other hand and tossed it over. ‘You’ll need one.’
Grunting thanks at him, I slipped it on, barely recognising the sound of my own voice.
Behind us the telmadh shouted: ‘Load!’
Quickly the engineer helped me to ready my weapon; his hands were steady but his movements urgent, which scared me. I also knew his face, I realised, but couldn’t place it.
He nodded, ‘Eyes front now,’ then pulled his mouth-guard up and shimmied back. I forced down as much of the raging will to run away as I could swallow and did the same, even as I heard the shout of ‘Marks!’ through muffled, buzzing, pulsing ears. Gloved wrist of trigger-hand against the barrier-top, with off-hand bracing from behind, I squinted through the glare.
Those Rath were running, not a hundred yards away from us; close enough to make out those that ran on all-fours the way they did before they leapt. I heard the weighty clunking, feet away, of cannons loading. I glanced back over my shoulder; hadn’t heard the hooves, but yes, just behind Tazen who sat behind me, panting, watching—cavalry were there. Lined up behind us, ready to engage.
‘Eyes front.’
‘Jhendrit-line ignite!’
I thumbed ignition, heard my click but none of the others. The bloody panic in my ears was just too loud. The flame ignited on the mech. Six shots . . . six shots, then what? Reload? Would we be reloading?
Now I could see the chalky faces, beetle eyes and tarry mouths. Where were their spears? I saw no spears . . .
‘Jezails fire!’
With the full strength of my arm, I squeezed that trigger, only to flinch and keel back at the explosions from both sides.
My comrade caught me—‘Not yet!’—while raucous screeches filled the air. ‘That’s cannon-fire!’ The yellow smoke of the four cannons wafted out from either side. He shoved me back into my crouch—Drev! Pintle’s crew!—not a second before the belted orders, ‘Jezails reload!’ and ‘Fusils fire at will!’
I’d barely got my balance back and was still—somewhere in my mind—trying to remember even one of those Exelcian prayers, as the pops and claps and cracks of a hundred firing fusils charged the air. Idiot! One schot-stone down already! I could only hope it had hit something.
Out of the mixed ochre miasma of chrozite smoke and airborne dust from landing rocks of engine-fire, the figures surged for us like shadows through a mist. I tried to aim at something. But they weren’t only running forward and, as always, were so fast. At least for me, too fast to target. Some shadows spun and fell. A knot of other shadows vanished through the murk as cannon-fire rang out again. The fusillade of burning schot-stones glittered through the gloom. I don’t think one of mine bit flesh.
That brown and yellow up ahead and all around us was so thick by the time the jhendrit-line ceased fire that the cavalry couldn’t have made it a dozen yards past the barricade before they were invisible. I heard another company of hooves approach from right and just behind. Then the screams of Ratheine death.
At the telmadh’s order, I stood up, holstered my fusil. Stroked Tazen’s neck. Drev said, ‘Good going.’
My thoughts weren’t racing now; my heart had slowed and steadied. Riders came back and the dust cleared. I saw the litter of Rath bodies amidst broken rubble. Some soldiers too. The squads regrouped and, with my Sixth, I made my way back to camp. Ate, drank and slept.
The passage spewed up its second wave a few days later on the tail of a Zeidhan vedette. This time three hundred, maybe more, reached the range of Ergmouth’s engines. I took my place on one of two formed fusil-lines, but by the time we opened fire there was almost nothing to shoot at. This horde was slower, stranded in heat, and as it came it pressed inward. That gave the engines a chance for several massive volleys which almost wiped them out in one. Not a single sword was drawn that day, crossbows and fusils merely picking off the stragglers. I hit two.
A bigger wave came the day after and, as more days passed, it seemed they didn’t need as much provoking. Keenly aware of our presence, they came each day. Only the odd pelkhas that rolled in to lash the line ever delayed them.
My squad was re-deployed on dune-slopes where the left flank of the passage veered northwest. North of that post was the narrow inlet – the one that funnelled the Rath down from the Spectres, or so we hoped – and there were other jhendrit squads on slopes both east and west of us. We weren’t just spotters though; we held the Rath on course. From dawn when, roused by the night-ranging riders, they surged over still cool ground towards Ergmouth, we passed back signals of their numbers and their speed with fusil-fire of coloured blind-schot. Which kept them moving.
Sometimes their groups would splinter off. Sometimes a few would mark our squads there on the slopes and start to cleave and climb for us. These were always quickly drawn off, if not by fusil-fire elsewhere then by the engines’ distant crashes. And there was always our cannon. But the constant noise and huge vibration of the rock-loads to the south always lured them through the gauntlet in the end, by then drained dry and slowed by heat.
They’d never make it. Straggling groups towards the dusk, always sun-blistered and helpless, were taken down by ride-by cavalry or shot by jhendrit in the saddle. Even Rusper, sometimes, rode among those fusiliers, which made me nervous. At least until I recognised the tall lance-spears of Chantris flanking the field in their half-columns. Bisecting charges from those columns would make short work of however many got too close.
Until the end of the third week, barely a unit of infantry, of any regiment, broke formation in daylight. Our new campaign having turned into little more than target practice, it was clear we were succeeding and that our enemy had no chance against our forces at Ergmouth. Not unless their daylight numbers tripled.
Which they could. It was still a fact—a worrying fact—that while Rusper and I knew of the Spectres, not even I knew the true number that was down there; how many thousands we were sapping. To better to judge, my special task as an attaché was to send back observations of Ratheine groups to High Command. Where did the biggest numbers come from? All I could really tell at first that seemed important was how few Rath now seemed to come armed with those thorny black spears. So far, at least, there’d been no poison.
When drawn off duty at spotter posts, I’d perch on Big Spale’s crow’s-nest to watch the play of destruction; watch their sun-sapped burst of rage as Ergmouth came into their sights and they made their final charge of desperation, plating themselves up as engine-fodder, smashed to skin and bones by the rocky hail. The height took getting used to, as did the turbulence and swinging of the arm as it arced past me. I’d just cling onto the timber and watch the boulder fly and smash, obliterating swathes . . . watch how they’d tear away and scatter beyond hope, then swell and mass, only to fall behind the cloud of the next rock-and-rubble torrent.
From up there too, I could see everything else; the coloured blind-schot of the fusils on the slopes; the running, rounding horses far off at the bases of the dunes; the flashing scopes and flapping banners, buzzing jhendra down the line of creaking, cranking, clacking, twisting, grinding, groaning metal, timber, rope and chain. Everything and everyone evenly powdered with sand and dust, the line from above looked like some ramshackle of littoral sticks and twigs left on a beach. And there’d be Rusper on the platform just below; his goggled face like dusty stone, voice rasping high above the din of engine volleys.
The bracelet never left my wrist. I still wasn’t sure why I kept it. But with every wave of Rath that came and raged and died in the passage, it became stranger to think that any one of them could have ever made the little string of charms. These were beasts. So I guess I kept it for whoever it had once belonged to. Like me, someone the monster had taken everything from.
‘This is no army,’ Quade said into the fourth week on the line. Tonight was the first time I’d been in the command tent for a while. ‘Plamen and I suspected it, even before our last retreat. If these Rath ever have been organised, then they have changed. They cannot see they’re running to their deaths.’
Iskandar nodded. ‘Pack instinct. They were always driven by pack instinct but now it’s all that binds their groups, impels advances. This Rath we face here is far from what Eredians describe of their conflicts in past centuries.’ As he spoke, he fed three messenger birds their meaty morsels.
I thought about the things still only I knew about. Visions of poison-eyed people, not Rath but human. Men and women who’d led the Rath, compelled, controlled them in some way. Men and women who were gone now. I knew they were.
If Plamen were here, I thought, if he’d only accepted the truth about the Spectres Deep, how would he have handled Ergmouth? Would he have done anything better? Would he have won this war by now?
The black hawk snapped up half a vole from Iskandar’s gloved fingers, breaking my thoughts. The other hawk was grey and white, and there was a falcon there as well, which looked like Artabh Keda’s falcon. From outside came the distant sounds of Ratheine screeches, snapping crossbow twine and thrumming hooves. But these were normal noises now, just another routine night-attack; by the sound of it, well in hand.
Slouched in his chair, Rusper was quiet; eyes in his lap as he polished the lenses of his goggles. Over the last week he’d started taking to more martial clothing; a steel-splint cuirass at his chest and, in place of his earlap cap, a quarter-crossed spangenhelm with chainmail neck-guard. An engineer remade by war.
The ferikhs carried on talking, and I watched Quade heave his great bulk forward to stir the coals of the brazier with the end of his crop. He growled deep disapproval of whatever Iskandar had said: ‘The High Commander did inform the Satrap of those suspicions,’ he said. ‘Or at least attempted to.’
Not looking up from polishing, Rusper cleared his throat.
That conversation ended.
Although as always I’d been trying to ignore him, sure enough our watching Shieldman sat in a low-lit corner. On a perch beside him, his own messenger kestrel.
‘On that subject, Viceroy,’ he said over steepled fingers. It wasn’t Jharis. ‘What news from Chidh Eshipas? How fares that front? Favourably, I hope.’ His eye slipped, I thought, to the falcon. ‘And how, indeed, fares our Commander?’
‘No word this day,’ Rusper grunted. ‘I expect Bardon’s report tomorrow.’
I knew well enough that every day reports were travelling back and forth across the sky. In fact, as long as the air wasn’t too hazy with dust, one could even see the fortress from up top of Big Spale. We weren’t really that far away.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Captain Mondric’s message always enclosed another message from Pintle, who still worked hard to reinforce the fragile Deep against all odds. The tremors that had begun before we’d left had grown much stronger, now shaking High District and citadel daily. There were new outer buttresses in place around the lower Hub wall, pressing in from digging level to help sustain the dragging weight of the immovable floodwater, yet it seemed that even this wasn’t enough.
Also under Pintle, munitions continued as well as training of fusil-jhendra. The dispatch of these squads, along with all our reinforcements and supplies and food and water, was under the Senera’s control. As far as I knew, no supply-wagon or squad had failed to turn up on the front, so she was obviously doing her own part well enough for the time being. No doubt our ever-present Shieldman sent reports.
Whatever those reports were, the Captain assured us that with the Shield’s new “firm hand” in the High District, Amyra didn’t have spare manpower to send into Laudassa. Again, I wondered about the caliphs who weren’t permitted to return. Wondered too about Venara; what she knew, and whatever else might have been agreed by her and Rusper before this started.
I picked up crossbow repair; Taflan taught me. The extra skill made jogging all those sweaty miles feel more worthwhile. Even though it was exhausting, especially with the stock of holstered tools and materials hanging off my belt, the telmadhi gave stern tongue-lashings if I was slow. The repeating mechanisms were still too complicated for me, but with some practice the windlass weapons weren’t too hard to do a fix on. Their components would come out of joint a lot, and need replacement parts as well, so I’d always be welcomed by a windlass unit with cheers and clapping. Some of those soldiers gave me a nickname before long – “White Runner” – after my headdress blew right off in a hard run. It surprised me how quickly I accepted it, and soon all shame about my weirdly whitened hair had disappeared. Just as well too. The name spread quickly.
In the fifth week, Marszal Savhar called me from duty. For a few days I’d been on maintenance; those sweat-soaked hours at the feet of the engines – sometimes even as they fired – and jogging far-flung distances between their stations. Exposed, alone, running in the void, with Rath hosts swarming towards me in the distance could make me giddy. It was too easy to imagine that the line wasn’t there: only the sand, the Rath and me. I never really got used to it.
When Savhar found me, her great roan thundering up behind the Treb I worked at, helping re-wind scrambled ropes, Taflan hopped down from her saddle and took my place on the job. The Marszal rode me back to command camp and when we got there, had two Methan soldiers bring up a familiar horse. A horse she said belonged to me. It was the bay I’d ridden on the mission!
Savhar smiled wryly. ‘Had him brought up from the fortress with the last supply-train. You’re High Command’s attaché, can’t be depending on your little legs.’
I grinned at her, a bit stunned. ‘Guess not,’ I said and patted gently down the horse’s snout. He released a rippling breath at me. Without any reminder, the name came back: Dulran, the soldier whose horse this was before he’d died at Shen Drumbar. Because of me.
‘Up you get then.’
‘Sir?’ I looked to the Marszal as battle sounds drifted to us.
She prompted again with a nod. ‘Into the saddle. Think the line can manage without you for an hour. Take a ride.’
‘Where?’
‘South’s best, boy. But not too far.’
I was rusty but it felt good. Strangely natural as well. There was no column to follow now, so Savhar gave me a few lessons when she could, and before long I was holding my own in the saddle. The horse responded to me well; maybe not so much to the strength of my legs and body, but to my voice. I called him Sprocket. That’s what the mark on his nose looked like.
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More direct confrontations came. At the start of the sixth week a full battalion headed north to intercept reported numbers in the “Spectres” inlet. On the dune-slopes with my squad, I watched the battle through my scope, and it spread wide, drawing more Rath as it raged.
There were losses to those ranks, both artillery and infantry. But despite the three-quarter mast at which their banner returned, announcing that the artabh had taken injuries himself, the day was called a success.
It triggered an instant spike.
Over the next days thickening rabbles rose and moved through the inlet. As they were smashed and blasted, screaming, I’d ride Sprocket the full distance down the left flank of the passage – from my squad’s surveillance post to the front itself – watching the awesome shower of death and adding my own fire whenever some desperate stray would flee, whooping, for me. The electric thrill of it filled me up and I felt right then that I never wanted it to end.
The feeling passed. This was a war. And just as Rusper had told me, no war had unbreakable lines.
If it really was the Spectres’ horde the battle had triggered, it was as if the bowels of its “deep” had opened. At every hour, dawn until dusk, Rath came in swarms of at least three hundred, glutting the passage. We lost two fusil squads the first day when the rabble came too fast. Those jhendra had no chance of retreat and they were slaughtered on the south dunes before a mounted troop could reach them. Drev, the engineer I’d served with that first time on the fusil-line, died there.
Loquar died there too, someone said, though I’d not known of the old man’s having joined those ranks. If he was dead, I only hoped Jerome would be alright without him; a weirdly numb and distant thought. Surely, wherever he slept at night, the fortress-city was still a safer place than here.
Three days into the spike, when it seemed the wave was only growing, all squads at spotter-signal posts were pulled back. The line changed shape to follow suit: stations drew inward, tighter now. Units of all cavalry, infantry and artillery were positioned in central buffers, and fusil-jhendra – now almost two hundred glinting fusils spanning a mile – made up Ergmouth’s spearhead.
As engines, Spale and all, flung unrelenting loads on swells and masses shaping in the sand, Rusper himself directed fusil-fire from horseback. Crossbows banded with their fire whenever any got too close, and they were always getting closer. Everyone of us knew that; by the fifth day of the wave, I’d lost all count of Rath I’d hit – now, at close range, almost easy, even through the sometimes overwhelming dust and chrozite gas.
The Ratheine flow south through that inlet only thickened. To thin it further from the front, heavy cavalry and mounted crossbows rode out either side of the passage with our best mounted fusiliers. Miles beyond our engine-range, they worked to trim down the swarms before they got into the gauntlet, then harry them close for target. Even then, soon enough, we couldn’t do without the crossbows backing up our fusil-line, and infantry too were dispatched often to fight the remnants that would have reached us. Among the vortan scimitars, these were the fearsome, sprinting spearmen from Shad, Zeidha and Ospégath. They were needed more and more.
But, while it never quite choked out, the flow dwindled on the sixth day. That was when everything changed.
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It wasn’t long after sunset. I was with Sprocket, stroking his nose and matted forelock as he quaffed feed and rock-salt from the bag I held. He was tethered alongside some of the other service horses, camels, mules and oxen, near my shelter. Couldn’t be helped, but I still wished he didn’t have to be out here. There’d been strong winds the last two nights. Almost like that pelkhas that had blasted Calvallagh, the gales were funnelled through the passage. Rising and falling through the nights, they thrashed our timber and canvas, hurling wads of dust and sand, making the tethered horses buck while whipping, blinding, deafening night-watch soldiers at all stations. Under the sleeping bivouacs, wrapping our bodies as tightly as we could inside our blankets wasn’t enough, and both nights Tazen had curled up into as small a ball as he could make of his long bones.
To make things worse, when I’d escaped and found some sleep, there’d been more dreams. Just dreams, not visions. The Disc was gone, all that was over. So maybe it was just the howling wind that brought back scenes of feral men and women, waist-length hair that swirled and billowed round their earth-marked faces, eyes of acid-poison green. The words they chanted, like some spell, over the Ratheine hordes. Wild men and women . . . Wild men . . .
What had those words been again? What had they meant?
‘You good?’ said Taflan, pulling me out of my thoughts. Starting a little, I saw her standing next to me and skewing eyebrows as she put her back towards the wind. Rising already.
‘Just tired,’ I said.
‘Tell me about it,’ she pouted. I wrapped up Sprocket’s feed. ‘Broth going round. Not gonna last long though, you coming?’
‘What’s in it?’ I asked, although I really didn’t care. It was broth – something other than khapent! But I liked talking to her. I liked when she talked to me.
‘Dunno,’ she garbled over her tongue, licking a bowl clean. ‘Mostly salt. But it’s okay.’
I gaped at her but did it smiling. ‘You can’t have two!’
‘Shut up,’ she smiled back, bright eyes darting for officers, then hid the bowl under her cape, pulling it close. ‘C’mon.’ We headed for the mess-tent.
But I never got that bowl of broth and Taflan never got her second. A mounted company stormed down the lined-up tents, forcing us to leap out of the way. It wasn’t normal, we both knew that instantly, and while it was hard to see much through the light of wind-torn torches, we heard the movements of more mobilising units on mid-line.
‘What’s going on?’ I shouted through a sudden gust of wind. She shook her head.
I jogged behind her towards the noise of hooves, fast-forming infantry troops and shouting. A night-attack was such a normal thing by now, easily handled. Why did this feel so urgent? Was that the clap of fusils, out there just past the frontal line? If it was fusils, then it sounded like a lot of sudden free-fire all at once and very close. Too close. After seven weeks of repelling night-crawlers, I knew that wasn’t how it sounded.
Jhendra were all over Big Spale’s ladders, the loudest shouting from the Treb units on either side. Crossbows loosed bolts from near there, rapid shots, a second unit adding fire. Then more claps, definitely fusils, and crimson blind-schot smoke against the black night sky. A roaring rush of running spearmen coursed from camp towards the front-line. Rath were already in view—on us in droves!
‘Taflan! Florian! To the Spale, both of you! Now!’ belted Gudgeon from the foot of the next Treb.
‘What, why?’ Taflan shouted.
‘Don’t question! Go!’
I grabbed her arm, swept her sideways, pulled her on towards Big Spale. As spearmen kept on flooding out, some barely ready for combat, a mass of cavalry poured in the other way between them, charging back, all battered and bloody. I swore I saw one Rath latched onto a running horse’s stirrups, pulling down its rider.
Taflan must have seen it too; she stopped and backed away, but I pulled harder. ‘We have orders!’ It took everything in me to keep the fear in her eyes then from taking hold of me as well.
By the time we reached the Spale, the fighting was everywhere and nowhere. We didn’t look at it, or for it, or back, or down to check if hands on rungs below us were human; we just climbed. The Spale’s ballistae and jezail-cannons had opened fire before we got to the third platform. As for the Spale itself, we knew it wasn’t going to fire tonight. Below, the ground was mottled orange with waving torches, and by that light a battle raged. I saw too many Rath down there.
Left and right, through the windows of the platform posts, we saw the torches of more units on the way from outer stations. They weren’t close. Ahead, the single jhendrit manning the jezail-frame swung the long weapon by its grips to point almost directly down. The cannon blasted. Only by its flash did I see the dead woman slumped beside it; a black-thorn spear stuck through her neck.
Another engineer seized my collar – ‘You! Squad?’
‘Sixth!’
He flung a pointing arm ahead—‘Replace!’—and shoved me to the cannon.
He shouted orders at Taflan too but I didn’t catch them as the desperate jhendrit saw me and barked—‘Load!’
All knowledge of fusils, schot and chrozite left my head in that moment: I didn’t know how they worked. Then, from the torch-flame and the darkness on the ground, two Rath leapt high and swung themselves off lower crossbars.
‘I’m empty—load, boy, dammit!’ roared my new partner. His former loader on the floor.
No sooner had he roared it than the chalk-white hands I wanted less than anything to see grasped the platform edge. The Florian Flint raised on the river-plain with Erik and Sarah ran away, behind eyeballs. Some other boy pulled out my fusil—loaded even as we’d run—and shot the thing clear off the edge. The chalk hand spurted black and vanished.
And still the Florian I knew stayed well away; screams from the second platform, below us, chased him deeper down. Not Ratheine screams. And more were coming. The other boy loaded that cannon.
‘Ready!’ I shouted, voice cracking.
Jezail-frame swung, the cannon-barrel almost striking my head—‘Position, fool!’
He was terrified.
Terrified but serving. Serving and knowing he was doomed. He’d soon be dead just like me.
We were losing the ground battle. Rath climbed the legs and posts and struts of our poor fortress. Their shadows danced against the firelight in the chute-turret of the arm. Somehow I readied the next load with hands that couldn’t stop shaking.
Don’t look below, or for coming troops. Don’t look at anything but this. Maybe that way I wouldn’t feel it when it happened.
Crossbows were doing all they could to pick off climbers, but those crossbows were down there too, surrounded, getting picked off themselves. I glanced up, ready, as our cannon’s fifth and last shot turned something that had just leapt onto the barrel into a spray of flesh and parts.
But my partner’s cry for reload was cut in half with his throat as another shrieking set of limbs vaulted the platform and set upon him with jaws and flailing. I froze and watched the poor man’s face become a morass of ribbons.
Clap! A point-blank fusil shot the creature through the skull. Gudgeon—he’d got here fast!
He turned the fusil on the mutilated jhendrit on the floor— clap!—then stepped over the bodies, took the grips.
I loaded, knowing I was next. ‘Ready sir!’
Clap-clap-clap-clap. Four shots in quick succession and I saw four Rath go down. He had good aim.
Still more Rath clambered on the posts from below. And then by some kind of miracle ranks of horses thundered from the sides. Chantris among them!
One more white body leapt up on my right side and looped that post. In the next second a massive crack of breaking timber made me jolt down to the floor, and the leaper was simply gone. In the same moment our whole platform tipped and listed out of place. Gudgeon and Taflan both grabbed hold of the jezail-frame as I skidded off the edge and dangled. Only dead bodies below.
‘Drop!’ yelled Gudgeon.
I did. Frame and cannon chased me down and smashed right through the second platform. Ropes and chains streamed down with it—Taflan too, her ankle caught up in a knot. She screamed. Landing on some part of the second platform that still held, I lunged to grab her, missed her hand, then darted back as frame and cannon pulled her down.
Pressing my body to the boards, I slammed my hands over my ears to mute the crash.
She lived. Next morning Gudgeon called me to his tent where she was lying on a pallet. ‘Asked for you.’ The man looked awful but wasn’t hurt. All of last night was a mess of terror inside my mind I couldn’t face. So many lives our little victory had cost. Big Spale was under repair, but firing even as I came to Taflan’s side. Khalyl stood up and went away, not saying anything to me.
Her legs were covered but I knew. The frame and cannon had crushed them; she wouldn’t ever walk again. It hadn’t even been the Rath. “Friendly fire.” That was something to call it.
When her eyes met mine they were foggy. She’d been given the stronger drugs; I knew I’d have to keep that secret since there weren’t nearly enough for the ranks. Most wounded soldiers were lucky if they got a drop of suntarr.
‘You could look worse,’ she croaked at me.
I fled her eyes, wishing I knew what to say to her now. She was so good and strong and brave. She’d tried to save that cannon. So unbelievably stupid. And now she was broken. Next to this, all my instincts to run from battle felt like nothing.
‘Got a favour to ask you,’ she said eventually. ‘You’re the Chief’s hand. Could you ask him to send a message to my brother?’
‘Your brother? I . . . thought he was a soldier. Isn’t he here?’
‘He’s in Chidh Eshipas. From what I hear, fight’s worse down there.’
Oh. Was it.
‘So he’s in Keda’s battalion?’ I said.
She winced at the pain in her legs or whatever mess was left of them. ‘Yeh, Eighth. Telmadh in the Mounted Scimitars. I wrote a note, think the Chief’ll send it? Just to let him know I’m okay.’
‘But you’re not okay,’ I said before thinking.
She didn’t flinch. ‘I know but still. Send it anyway. Don’t want him worrying, that’s all. He’s always been the one who made our mother proudest in our family, even after I got apprenticed in the Royal. And he’s always worrying about me. Needs to keep his spirits up and keep on going. Can’t know what’s happened to me before the war’s done. Understand?’
She passed a crumpled strip of paper. I didn’t have to read it though, or see her brother’s name, to know I wouldn’t have to tell the lie she’d asked. But like the coward I was, I nodded.
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The waves kept steady. Our scouts reported that the gales had pushed the inlet dunes wider, opening the way almost to the Spectres. Rabbles were thinner by day and sparsely spread, so that the engines were less effective at hitting numbers worth their rock. Trebs were stood down; the Mules and Pulls drawn down the flanks, their fire directed by blind-schot signal from the artabhs in the field as their own troops pushed inward. And now by night, not only did we have to deal with the attacks from the dunes, but those same waves from the north just kept on coming. Denser and faster and fiercer in the dark.
For a full five days after that awful night, the Ergmouth Line never slept. Torch-bearing troops still held the field at either flank all through the dark hours, and now the engines’ rock and rubble loads were coated in chrozite, the line dispatching balls of fire that lit the passage. No fusil-jhendra were deployed; not in the night, couldn’t be risked. But even then, confined to mid-front maintenance, I slept in shifts.
Then our supply-train was delayed. The day it should have reached us passed and raged on into the next. Along with rock and rubble, we were low on schot and chrozite, weapons, coal, oil, food and water. Unavoidable melee between Rath and our foot troops had started costing in lives; soon it would start to sap our numbers just as fast as we were sapping theirs. A famous Zeidhan artabh had died, also many brave telmadhi of Ospégath’s regiment.
The southern infantry, I knew, had fought the best in hand-to-hand and they’d been heavily relied on these past nights. Even I could tell there were low spirits among the soldiers of the south, and mounting pressure from those caliphs to stand them down. In the command tent one night I swore I heard Caliphs Taruk and Khalin threaten to detach their regiments. Wouldn’t that be treason?
We were low on medical supplies too. The Rath’s poisoned spearheads had reappeared, swelling the infirmary tents to their limits. What food we had was very poor, and for every soldier, officer and engineer the water quota was cut back a sip per ration. It was hard going.
Hawks were flown back to the fortress. No reply returning. When Rusper told me he’d lost contact with Captain Mondric, I knew that something was wrong. Not only that, but at some point our ghostly Shieldman had disappeared.
Finally, on the last day of that long, dry, sleepless week of war – eighth of the campaign – our late supplies came. With her.
While the earth shook and soldiers shouted in the passage far away, I watched from the top of Big Spale. The ten supply-wagons dispersed among the tents of command camp and the blue-and-white procession made its way towards us, joined by three caliphs. Something here was official. Three regimental banners followed her train: the crossed longspears, the bull’s head and the bird in flight: that same red bird from my quilt – Shad, Zeidha and Ospégath.
Fabulous braids out of sight, her head, neck and shoulders were all enclosed by a steel-scale coif with just a window for her face. A sleek white cape overhung her blue jacket. The dress was martial, I supposed, in a ceremonial sort of way. In stark contrast to Rusper, who now looked more like a true soldier than any one of the ferikhs. As they dismounted, I saw another woman with them. Jharis too, among the Shieldmen.
The Flag-Senera took to the ladders with much more ease than I expected, followed by her company, and was received by High Command. Quickly gathering my headdress folds more closely round my face, I darted halfway up the crow’s-nest.
‘My Shield informs me you’ve been forced to send melee into the field.’
‘As you see,’ said Rusper, clipped. ‘Six battalions of Antissan and Verunian Regiment cavalry are holding back the tide.’
‘You fail to mention our spears, Viceroy,’ said the Shadish caliph. I heard the acid in his voice, and didn’t like how close he stood to Amyra. Why were they here with her at all? It almost seemed that they had known she would be coming.
‘Regrettable losses,’ Rusper replied, turning lenses on Amyra. ‘Yet preventable had not supplies been brought so low. Why are those wagons five days late?’
‘The attentions of your Guild have been drawn elsewhere,’ Amyra told him, lifting her chin as if to take a lick of breeze to her coiffed neck.
‘Explain your meaning.’
‘I have suspended your munitions.’
‘What? You haven’t authority to—’
‘Your Deep has compromised the citadel foundations, Honorary Caliph. There will be no further weapon-works until it’s stabilised.’
Rusper took a moment’s silence, then said: ‘The Rath only fight us because we’re here. Our engines and fusils draw them out. Should that battery cease, the Rath in turn will withdraw and return underground.’
Amyra stepped away from her party and gazed out across the passage of our gauntlet. ‘Was it not somewhat wishful of you to conduct this campaign as though the enemy would continue to advance in mere dribbles? Since last we spoke there have been most extensive casualties.’
‘Four hundred Vedish soldiers in this week past.’ This from the Zeidhan caliph.
‘We are fighting the war the Sanhedrin desires,’ Rusper pressed. ‘As for casualties, what war has none of those, sinarre?’
At that, Amyra looked to Quade with an almost pleasant question painted on black-lined lips and eyebrows.
‘The advantage was used while we had it,’ he rumbled.
‘Suppose these waves do not desist?’ she asked the ferikh, almost ignoring Rusper. ‘How long can you withstand them?’
Quade stood stock-still for a five long seconds. I knew he was weighing lives. ‘Perhaps a week.’
‘Much as I thought.’
‘All steady!’ roared an artabh from the platform just below. I gripped the frame on instinct, watching Rusper lead Amyra to the nearest of the beams and bid her hold. ‘Loose!’ The Spale thrust its giant arm, which swung past me. The turret shook. We all watched the boulder fly. Rusper looked northeast as a cheer went up from far away in the field.
‘You will accompany me back to the city now, Honorary Caliph,’ Amyra said, still surveying.
‘I will remain on the front,’ countered Rusper.
‘You will not,’ she chimed back, cool.
It was only then that the second woman stepped forward, lowering a silken cowl and mouthguard. I couldn’t see the face but heard her civil greeting: ‘Viceroy.’
He looked at her for just a moment before he lunged at his goggles and ripped them clear of his eyes. ‘What’ve you done?’ he asked Amyra. But when Amyra simply stood there, staring back, Rusper seethed, showing teeth, and grabbed her wrist. ‘What have you done?’
Five swords sliced clear of blue scabbards, Lieutenant Jharis stepping forward. Rusper glared into Amyra’s steel-scale window, chest heaving. Then let her go.
She made no move to touch or soothe where he had gripped her so roughly, saying simply: ‘I think your ferikhs have the campaign well in hand. That is to say, of course, the ferikhs of the first four regiments.’
Still baring teeth, Rusper looked from Amyra, to the woman I now knew was Venara, to the caliphs.
And then the Caliph of Ospégath said: ‘Viceroy. The south hereby retires its forces from the defence. Begging the grace of the Satrap, we can do no more for this war.’
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We left the front with Amyra and Venara’s escort, that first block of southern battalions, their caliphs, and a line of wagons full of the dying. Those who had taken Rath poison would be dead before we got there. Tazen stayed; Ferikh Iskandar would look after him now. I rode Sprocket, not having the courage to be with Taflan on the wagon, while Viceroy and Senera rode at the heads of their columns. But it was still some miles before Antissa when they spoke again.
‘A party approaches, sir,’ reported Marszal Savhar.
‘This far south?’ said Rusper.
I craned my neck from horseback but could only make out a thin scribble of movement on the western horizon . . . less of a rabble than a line.
‘It isn’t Rath,’ said Savhar. ‘It’s clerics.’
‘Clerics?’ snapped Rusper. ‘Which ones, can you tell?’
A long line . . .
‘All of them.’