The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (23 page)

A good three hundred now lay dead below the western entrance
to the pass, but the enemy could afford those casualties more easily than Nish
could the seven men and one woman he’d lost here. All his troops were
exhausted, and the end was very close now, for the enemy must soon force the
entrance.

Could he and the survivors run across to the eastern side
and join with Flangers’s forces? Without a rear-guard they were likely to be
cut down from behind, but if they made it they might counterattack the
attackers at the eastern slot and break through – assuming there were
only a few of them, which was unlikely.

There are too many ifs, he thought despairingly, so tired
that he could barely think straight. He just wanted to lie down, close his eyes
and see an end to it. What was the point in fighting on when the result was no
longer in doubt? They had done their best; they had saved Gendrigore and could
do no more; there were simply too many of the enemy.

But Nish remembered the duty he owed to his dead, and all
the friends he’d lost, and especially Maelys. She would not give in; she never
did, and neither could he after all they’d been through; not when the cost of
surrender was an ignominious death for all his friends. Far better to die an
heroic death in battle; at least their tale would live on to inspire other
rebels.

The enemy were moving up the slope, slowly and purposefully,
and their leaders had just come up against the defenders at the entrance when
there was an outcry from the crest of the pass, an almighty crash, and shortly
he heard the staggering footsteps of exhausted men. Nish whirled and headed up
the slope, fearing the worst.

‘They’ve broken through,’ a haggard militiaman gasped, the
first of three to top the rise. He was drenched in blood, though he did not
appear to be injured badly.

Nish ran towards them. They still bore their weapons, so it
wasn’t a rout. ‘Are you the only survivors?’

The bloody man shook his head. ‘There are others. Our
lieutenant had a surprise rigged up for them. When –’ He bent over,
gasping, caught his breath and said, ‘When he knew they were going to break
through the slot, Flangers brought the right-hand wall down on them; buried at
least ten of the devils.’

‘Then how did they get in …?’

‘Collapse made a ramp over the defences. A dozen men can
cross it at a time now, and we can’t defend it. The next wave of the enemy are
just below the bowl. In a couple of minutes they’ll be through.’

Nish looked around. ‘Hide behind the healers’ tent and keep
watch over our wounded, but don’t show yourself unless the enemy go for them.’

He continued to the top of the pass, where he encountered
Flangers and the last thirteen of the militia from the eastern side, ten men
and three women.

‘I knew collapsing the wall was a risk,’ Flangers said, ‘but
they were about to break through. This way, it’s gained us a few more minutes.’

‘Not enough,’ said Nish.

‘While we’re alive, anything can happen. How are things
here?’

‘I don’t see how we can keep them out this time.’

‘Then let’s put our backs together and make a last stand.’

They plodded down to the western entrance and, during the
first respite, took their places behind the rock wall. Flangers still carried
the heavy Whelm jag-sword, Nish his sabre.

He would have preferred a proper two-edged blade in this
situation, but the sabre did suit his hand and, though it had belonged to an
enemy, he felt lucky when he carried it. Sometimes it seemed to know better
where to strike than he did, which wasn’t the blessing that it seemed.

‘How come you kept the jag-sword?’ said Nish.

‘It only ever takes one blow to bring the enemy down,’ said
Flangers.

A pair of soldiers were scrambling up the steep slope, short
lances out. They looked young enough to be Nish’s sons, and alike enough to be
brothers, or even twins, but Nish and Flangers had worked out a defence for
every kind of attack long ago, and they did not hesitate.

The two soldiers began to scrabble up the steep rubble wall.
Partly shielded behind it, Flangers stepped left, dropped down and swung the
jag-sword in an almost horizontal circle, striking the lance underneath and
driving the point up.

The blade of the jag-sword skidded along the underside of
the lance, tearing through the young man’s knuckles, and when he flinched
Flangers cut him down with a single spearing blow to the upper chest. It wasn’t
pretty, but it was quick; he was dead when he hit the ground.

Nish waited until the last second. Exhausted from charging
all that way uphill, his opponent stumbled, and Nish turned side-on to evade
the point of the lance and thrust his sabre out. The soldier could not stop in
time, drove himself onto the point and his momentum did the rest. Nish, quite
gently, pushed him off the blade. The body rolled down the slope to join the
hundreds already lying there.

And so it went on. Some soldiers died easily, others hard,
and some fought all the way to Nish’s throat before he finally finished them,
but they all fell in the end, being at such a disadvantage.

The bodies continued to accumulate until they formed a low
barrier; about twenty of the enemy took shelter behind it to catch their
breath. Nish’s men had exhausted their arrows long ago, else they would have
cut the enemy down before they came close. They hurled rocks and the enemy’s
spears back at them once they came within range, but to little effect.

Now all twenty sprang out at once, and only two had fallen
by the time they reached the defences. Four turned side-on on the narrow path
so as to attack together up the rubble wall, though that left their stroke play
rather cramped. Nish and Flangers finished their two, but the defenders to
either side of them fell.

Two more enemy took the place of the fallen two and
Flangers’s opponent, a huge, brawny sergeant, snapped the blade of the
jag-sword with a mighty sweep of his broadsword.

Flangers hurled the hilt at the sergeant, striking him so
hard on the forehead that he stumbled, dazed, but the others came on and no one
had come forward to fill the breaches on either side of Nish and Flangers. Then
a small, carrot-topped figure slid in beside Nish, waving a sword that was far
too big.

‘Huwld!’ Nish cried. ‘Get out of here.’

‘I have to make up –’

The sergeant shot up like a striking snake, lunging and
trying to spit the boy like a suckling pig. Nish swung his sabre sideways,
knowing that he couldn’t parry that fierce blow in time, but the sabre seemed
to leap in his hands, dragging him with it, and slammed into the sergeant’s
sword not far from the tip.

Huwld screamed, and Nish was sure he’d been mortally
wounded. He heaved the sabre sideways, slamming the back of the blade into the
sergeant’s forehead with colossal force, and he fell away. But more of the
enemy were coming up fast, and he knew the gate was lost.

‘Fall back!’ he cried, fighting two soldiers at once with
the sabre.

Flangers snatched up the sergeant’s broadsword and retreated
down the uphill side of the wall, dragging Huwld with him. The other two
militiamen were dead; Nish left them where they lay.

‘Same plan as at the eastern pass,’ Flangers grunted as they
backed through the narrow gap behind the barrier.

‘What?’ said Nish, defending furiously. Within the gate,
with its rock walls towering to either side, only two could come at him at the
same time, but they were driving him backwards.

Flangers dropped Huwld, who groaned. Taking hold of a
dangling length of rope embedded in the wall, he heaved, and the cunningly
constructed wall collapsed from the top, filling the gap and burying the two
soldiers Nish had been fighting, plus another two behind them.

‘A little trick I thought up in my idle years as the
Numinator’s prisoner,’ Flangers said with a wry smile.

It had saved them, though, as with the collapse of the
eastern defences, it had formed a rubble ramp over which seven or eight
soldiers could storm the gap at once, ruining an almost perfect defensive
position.

Nish bent over Huwld, who sat up, weeping with pain. ‘My
finger.’

‘There’s no time to look at it.’ Nish threw him over his
shoulder.

As they moved up the slope to meet the survivors from the
eastern side, Nish did a quick count – twenty-five of the militia were
still on their feet, counting the three he’d sent to guard the wounded.

Another fifteen wounded were still alive, including Aimee
and Clech, plus two healers, lanky Dulya and plump, palely pretty Scandey. The
third healer, Ghosh, had been killed while Nish was up at the ice sheet.
Forty-two still alive of the three hundred and sixty he’d had down in the
clearing, but there was no way out now.

They formed a semi-circle with their backs to the cliffed
flank of the white-thorn peak, and waited. The enemy were coming over the
western wall and gathering inside. The advantage was all theirs now and they
could afford to wait until they had the numbers. There were at least seventy of
them.

The attackers from the eastern pass appeared at the top of
the hill, just a handful at first, then more until another thirty stood there.
They stopped, watching, waiting.

‘Where’s the rest of the army?’ said Nish. ‘Why is Klarm
holding back?’

‘He doesn’t need any more,’ said Flangers. ‘A hundred of
them versus twenty-five of us.’ He hefted the broadsword. ‘And yet, I’ve fought
against worse odds.’

‘So have I,’ said Nish, ‘but not out in the open like this.’
He turned to Huwld. ‘Give me a look at you, lad.’

Huwld held up his left hand, which was covered in blood, and
his index finger was gone; the sergeant’s sword blow had severed it and badly
cut the next finger and thumb. ‘It’s my punishment,’ he said limply. ‘It’s all
my fault.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Nish, putting his arm around the
boy’s narrow shoulders. ‘You were doing your best; it could have happened to
anyone.’

‘It is my fault.
It
is!
I gave the knife to Uncle Boobelar. Why didn’t he cut himself free and
jump? Why did he have to drag those three men over with him?’

Because he’s scum, Nish thought, but he could not say it.
The boy felt guilty enough as it was. No wonder he’d been working himself to
exhaustion, day and night, trying to make up for it.

‘We all make mistakes, Huwld,’ he said gently. ‘I should
know. I’ve made more than most.’

‘Not as bad as this,’ said Huwld.

‘Even worse,’ said Nish. ‘Hush now; go back to the ranks,
lad.’

A little man had appeared beside the troops at the top of
the pass. He said a few words to them and headed slowly down. It was General
Klarm, here for the victory.

He stopped ten paces away, nodding stiffly to Nish and
Flangers. He wasn’t carrying the tears, Nish noticed.

‘What a waltz it’s been, these past days,’ said Klarm.

Nish bowed ironically. ‘I don’t suppose you get many.’

‘Many what?’

‘Dances. Being what you are.’

It was a low blow, sneering at any man’s physical attributes,
and Nish had suffered as much as anyone for his lack of stature and unhandsome
features, but it had been a terrible day of an awful week and he had to do
something to wipe the smile off the face of his enemy.

Too late he remembered Flydd telling him, way back in the
days of the lyrinx war, that the dwarf was a great favourite of the ladies
– not just for his equipment, which had the stature he lacked and more,
but for the inventive ways he wielded it.

Klarm laughed in his face. ‘Weakest yet, Nish. I’ve been
insulted by masters, and you’ll get no rise out of me that way. I’ve got to
hand it to you,’ he went on in that rich, melodious voice, ‘I never would have
thought it possible, but you’ve beaten me over and again. Another few hours and
well … you didn’t get them, did you? What a tale this struggle would make for
the Histories, if I could permit it to be told. But it never will be.’

‘What do you mean, another few hours?’ said Nish. ‘You’ve
still got half an army down below –
haven’t
you
?’

‘If only it were so,’ said Klarm. ‘If you could have held
out an hour longer, you might have had the victory you so desperately crave
–
and
the Great Tale to go with
it.’

Nish could not speak. How could it be so? Klarm had to be
lying, or making a monstrous joke, just to grind them down even further.

‘And if you had won,’ Klarm went on after a studied pause,
‘and I’d survived, I would have been the first to salute you, for I know a
brave man when I see him, and a born leader. I would have honoured you, but you
broke too soon and the victory is mine –’ He smiled, then dropped the
bombshell. ‘Though these are the only men I have left.’

‘Out of ten thousand?’ Nish cried. He couldn’t help himself.

‘I lost half of that number to dysentery, fevers, ulcers,
flesh-eating worms, broken legs, arms and heads, and all the other hazards of
this aptly named Range of Ruin, before my advance guard even reached the pass.
Five hundred fell in the clearings on the first day of battle, or were swept
away by the flood, and well over a thousand died at the two passes before …’

‘My avalanche took most of the survivors,’ said Nish
wonderingly. ‘And all but a hundred of them have been killed today.’

We went so close, he thought, fighting to contain his
anguish while knowing it was written large across his face. If we’d known how
few the enemy were after the avalanche, surely we would have found that little
bit extra in courage or cunning to hold them off.

A well-placed rockslide, even a higher defensive wall might
have done it. But I gave up hope of winning; instead, as Flydd pointed out, I
took refuge in stolid defence which could never bring us victory. If only I’d
known, he thought bitterly.