For four hours, the gates had burned, banishing the darkness of night as fire and smoke filled the square. The men of Birnah had done their best to quench the fires; soldiers and civilians alike had formed bucket brigades that worked tirelessly to ferry water from the nearest wells to the gate. At first, it seemed their efforts might succeed as they reclaimed entire portions of the gates from the flames - but fire, unlike men, has no stamina. The flames resurged as the soldiers' strength flagged and began pumping great columns of superheated steam into the air as it reclaimed the areas that had been quenched. In the end, the bucket brigades were forced to retreat or be boiled alive.
Resigning himself to the inevitability of the gate’s collapse, Marīltu quickly reassigned workers to preparing a secondary line of defense. The people of Birnah worked feverishly, hauling great loads of dirt and lumber from the warehouses on the far side of the city as they erected a wall of mounded dirt in a semicircle around the gate.
They used water from the wells to wet the pile of earth, counting on the overwhelming heat of the burning gate to turn them into semi-solid mud bricks, while others planted sharpened wooden stacks in rows along its top and seeded the ground in front of the earthen mods with caltrops. By the time the gates collapsed, the hasty kill box was finished and Marīltu had stationed every archer he commanded behind a protective shield wall of durgu soldiers. All they could do now was wait for the inevitable attack.
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“Has he woken up yet?” Jasper wheezed as he stepped into the guard room, his lungs burning from the smoke that filled the outer courtyard.
“Still out,” Tsia reported unhappily. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think he started tapping into his soul.”
Jasper coughed again, bending over as his lungs strove to break up the smoke-infused mucus filling them, and Ihra ran over to the corner of the room. She grabbed a ladle hanging on the wall and, dipping it into the water barrel, brought it back to him. “Here.”
He guzzled the water greedily, even as it tore at his scarred throat, and asked for seconds before responding.
“I don’t think he knows how to burn his soul, thank heavens. Just pushed himself to the brink and beyond.” He coughed again, hacking up a glob of mucus, and felt the air finally reach his lungs. “The gate fell,” he said simply as he looked up at Ihra. “Are you still wanting to leave?”
“We can still hold the city,” Tsia cut in breathlessly. “You saw the fortifications Marīltu erected, and if those fall, we can build more. We’ll fight them every step away.”
“Those earthworks are a decent stopgap,” Jasper agreed, “and I’m sure it'll take hundreds, maybe even thousands, of Strynn’s soldiers to overrun them, but you saw the army outside. They’ve got the numbers to wear us down, as long as they can stomach the casualties.”
“The prince seems determined to stay.” Ihra didn’t directly answer his question, but her meaning was clear.
“Doesn’t mean we have to stay here if you don't want to,” he shrugged, but his friend shook her head.
“It does if we want to fulfill your quest,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but…” Jasper grimaced. “S̆ams̆ādur's made his decision, but that doesn’t override our right to make our own. Kas̆dael’s quest was to protect him from assassins, not from his own decisions.”
Ihra sighed, “As long as we keep Dūr-Salmu, we have a way out of the city, so for now…we can stay.” Her eyes drifted over to Erin, who was still out like a light. “We’d have a hard time moving him in this condition anyway.”
They both knew it was a poor excuse, but Jasper felt no need to argue. Although he wasn’t too sure he was ready to die for the city, neither was he especially keen on running away while a chance of victory remained. “If we’re going to stay, then we need a plan. Marīltu’s fortifications should hold them off for a little while, but what happens when the fire mages return?” he asked. “They already hold most of the advantages; if we let them control the flow of the fight, we’ll lose.”
“Do you have something in mind?” Ihra asked.
“I know what I’d like to do,” he admitted. “There’s only two points of access to the city - the northern and southern bridges. The gate for the northern bridge is undamaged, so if we could simply remove the southern bridge from the equation, their moment of opportunity would be lost. They’d either have to breach the northern gate, or find enough boats to cross the moat - and they’d be sitting ducks if they tried to launch an amphibious invasion."
“But the bridge is built from several hundred tons of solid rock,” Ihra objected. “I don’t think there's any way we can bring it down.”
He sighed, running a hand through his shaggy locks. “I know. Maybe someday my spells will be strong enough to do the trick, but they aren’t right now. There’s no chance either of you have heard of something called black powder, right?”
“I think the blacksmiths have a black powder they use,” Tsia responded hesitantly.
“Does it blow things up when set on fire?”
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She shook her head, and he cursed.
“Damn, that’s what I thought. I haven’t seen anything that looks like gunpowder since I got here. In theory, it’s a pretty simple recipe - charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter - whatever the hell that is - but I wouldn’t even begin to know how to actually make gunpowder, and it's not like we have time to experiment.” Plus, Jasper continued silently, even if we did have time, I’m not sure I want to be responsible for introducing gunpowder to the world. Talk about blood on your hands.
“Any other ideas?” Ihra asked.
“Maybe.” Jasper hesitated, rolling the idea over in his mind. “You know, there’s an old saying back home - ‘cut off the head of the snake and the body will follow.’”
“And that means?”
“Kill the leaders and destroy the army," he responded bluntly. "We’re not strong enough to take out a whole army by ourselves, especially since both of my best spells are on cooldown,” he grumbled, “but if we kill their commanders and the mages, maybe the rest of the soldiers will retreat."
“If we move fast, I can get us across the moat before sunrise. If we wait till the enemy presses the assault on the gates, we should have a shot at their commanders. With any luck, it will do the trick, and if it doesn’t, well…” Jasper shrugged, “I guess we’ll already be out of the city."
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“You have got to be kidding me,” Nissilât snarled. “You expect me to just roll over and play dead?”
Her uncle’s lackey smirked. “Actually, I’m rather hoping you won’t. Please, give me an excuse, girl, to countermand you in front of the men. One way or another, your uncle will make sure the court knows who deserves the credit for our victory, but I’d rather the soldiers know it too.”
She unclenched her fists as a trickle of something warm ran down her hand, but kept her eyes glued on the commander. “You overstep.” She fought to keep her voice calm as she continued. “My uncle oversteps. There are rules. He doesn't have the authority to elevate a chairwarmer like you over me.”
“You’re as short-sighted as your father,” the man sneered. “Rules don’t matter when you have the power to ignore them.” He tapped the letter against his hand. “If I read the king’s commands to the troops, who do you think they'll follow? Him or you?”
Her eyes flitted quickly around the circle of commanders. A few watched with eager sneers, obviously on her uncle’s side, while the rest looked away, uncomfortable with the flagrant breach of protocol but unwilling to take a stand against the king’s direct orders. Only Markînu met her gaze, but he too offered a faint shake of his head at her unasked question.
It was a crushing blow. Forcing herself to stay composed, she nodded her head curtly. “Very well, commander. Order the charge.”
She watched from the side in disgust as he dispensed his commands. The man was a fool, not even bothering to send out scouts to make sure the rubble of the gate was clear enough for soldiers to pass before he gave the order for their cavalry to charge.
Unfortunately, Nissilât also knew it likely wouldn’t matter as the pride of her army, five thousand heavy cavalry rumbled onto the bridge. Even if Birnah’s defenders fought like lions, it wouldn’t matter in the face of such overwhelming power. Sooner or later, they would crumble.
The unnecessary sacrifice sat sour in her stomach, but there was nothing she could do at this point. No one, not even Markînu was willing to put themselves on the line for her, and while she wanted to believe that the council of nobles would censure her uncle for his overstep when they returned to the capital, she knew that it was a fool’s hope. No one would dare criticize the king who had finally succeeded in bringing Birnah under his heel.
The only positive was the old fool was too full of himself to pay attention to her. She slipped away as he continued orchestrating the charge, knowing that, while the bulk of the army might not listen to her, at least her personal command would. The least she could do was keep them out of the coming charnel, and pray a moment of opportunity arose.
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Although the dark of night wrapped around the oncoming cavalry like a cloak of invisibility, it did nothing to quell the thunder of their horses’ hooves.
The ground shook as the horsemen stormed across the bridge, the tremors strong enough to send miniature avalanches of dirt down the sides of the earthen mounds on which S̆ams̆ādur stood. The prince saw the soldiers of Birnah shifting, fear on their faces, as they stared into the darkness, and he could hear the panic in their thoughts. That won’t do.
Raising his axe high, he beat it against his shield, screaming into the night. “Ana Birināti! Ana Birnah!” His men were quick to join him in the chorus of defiance, as they drowned out the sound of approaching hooves, the soldiers of Birnah raised their voices too. “Ana Birnah! Mut, Mūt ana mutū Stryn!”
Their screams were overpowered as the first horses emerged from the darkness and, at Mariltu’s command, the archers released their volley. An impenetrable thicket of arrows tore through horse and rider alike, and those few that escaped the hail of arrows were promptly lamed as they trod on the hidden caltrops.
In an instant, the front row was practically deleted, as the horsemen were tossed to the ground, but a charge of this magnitude had too much momentum to be so simply stopped. The men died screaming as their own allies rode over them, only for the next rank to join them on the ground as they hit the next batch of arrows and caltrops.
The slaughter was enough to turn his stomach, but S̆ams̆ādur choked down the bile burning his throat, and locked his shield with his men’s. The cavalry continued forward, unable to stop his charge, and readied his essence, reaching for the spell the goddess had granted him in exchange for his service.
One beat. Two beats. The prince waited until he could see the whites of their eyes before he released his essence. “S̆adād.”
The greedy spell consumed nearly a sixth of his essence with a single cast, but the effect was instantaneous. Dozens of his foes froze as their minds betrayed them, locking them in a body that refused to move as their very own horses delivered them into the waiting arms of the durgū.
His blade rose and fell, decapitating the frozen soldier before him. With a grunt, he shoved the body aside with his shield a second before the next victim arrived. Another chop, another shove, another foe fast approaching, with no end in sight. S̆ams̆a help us.