The War of the Grail (46 page)

Elizabeth gasped and Fletcher grimaced.

Jack tightened one hand into a fist. The avatar could easily slaughter hundreds of people, but there was nothing he or anyone else on the ramparts could do about that at the moment. They still had to defend the wall.

He spun round and stared over the parapet. While he’d been distracted by the avatar, the European Army troops had been pressing on up the hill. The vanguard was now no more than a hundred yards away.

‘Fire at them!’ Jack shouted to his men.

Elizabeth placed Cecily back down on the walkway and stood beside Jack. Saleem positioned himself on the far side of her and raised his musket. The three of them aimed and fired at the swarm of men rushing up the scarp. At the same time, the other rebels along the wall blasted with their muskets. The firearms crackled and spat, and smoke blurred Jack’s view for a moment. When it cleared, he saw that scores of enemy soldiers had been knocked down.

But there were hundreds more still clambering up.

Jack, Saleem and Elizabeth reloaded and fired with the other rebels. Flocks of bullets battered into the enemy, cutting men down like wheat beneath a scythe.

A powder flask further along the wall exploded and went flying through the air. It must have ignited as someone reloaded.

The gunners began firing grape. The guns roared and sprayed the shrieking metal across the incline, flaying the soldiers rushing up. Men fell, surrounded by clouds of blood, but many more ran on fearlessly.

Jack guessed there were about three hundred soldiers still charging at the fortress, and he now noticed many of them were carrying scaling ladders.

‘Keep firing!’ he shouted. But he hardly needed to. The rebels were blasting round after round at the enemy, slaughtering many, but not enough to stop the assault entirely.

Jack noticed the splutter of muskets coming from the south wall. When he glanced across, he saw smoke smothering the southern battlements. The rebels there were fighting off a second assault.

He turned and fired again into the mass of soldiers below, but the first troops had already reached the wall. The enemy soldiers began raising ladders and scrabbling up.

‘Get your knives out,’ Jack told Saleem and Elizabeth.

The three of them clicked the catches on their muskets and the knives snapped into place. Jack studied Elizabeth for a second. She stood with her legs apart and her musket at her waist, the knife pointing towards the battlements. How could she hope to fight against trained soldiers? How had it come to this?

The situation was unreal, and yet there was nothing Jack could do about it. They all had to fight for their lives. Elizabeth was no exception.

The top of a ladder tapped against the battlements directly in front of him. He gestured to Saleem and Elizabeth. ‘Push this away!’

The three of them slung their muskets on their shoulders and set about heaving the ladder away from the wall. Jack pressed against one side, while Saleem and Elizabeth pushed at the other.

Soldiers were already battering up the steps, and the ladder shuddered in Jack’s hands. He ground his teeth, grunted and gasped. They had to get the ladder away from the wall before it became too weighed down with attackers.

Groaning at the effort, Jack managed to force his side of the ladder off the parapet. Saleem and Elizabeth only managed to shift their side slightly, but it didn’t matter. Jack had done enough to send the ladder sliding sideways down the wall. The soldiers cried out and tumbled back down to the ground.

All along the ramparts, further ladders smacked into the wall. The enemy streamed up the rungs and the rebels struggled to shove the ladders away. Most of the attackers appeared to be European Mohammedans, but amongst them were a handful of Rajthanan officers wielding scimitars.

Jack raised his musket and fired at a line of soldiers climbing a nearby ladder. He hit one of the men, who toppled to the ground, clutching a wound in his chest.

Saleem and Elizabeth fired now as well, along with those rebels who weren’t wrestling with one of the scaling ladders. The bullets pelted the soldiers below, knocking scores back to the ground.

The gunners angled their pieces down and blasted howling grape at the enemy.

Soldiers managed to clamber to the top of one ladder and jump down onto the walkway. Hand-to-hand fighting broke out, but the rebels soon slaughtered the attackers and finally heaved the ladder away.

Jack reloaded and fired several times, picking off soldiers one by one. He then flung a few lightning bolts at a group of attackers trying to raise a ladder immediately below him. A thick cloud of smoke suffocated the battlements so that he could see no more than a foot in front of him.

And then the muskets and guns fell silent. The smoke drifted apart to reveal the hillside was littered with bodies and broken ladders. A few of the soldiers squirmed on the ground and cried out in pain, but most were already dead. A single Rajthanan officer was limping about in a daze, swinging his scimitar at imaginary foes. A musket cracked on the wall and the man collapsed.

Now, not a single enemy soldier was left standing.

Fletcher punched the air and cried out, ‘God’s will in England!’

‘God’s will in England!’ the rebels along the wall shouted back.

Jack embraced Elizabeth, clasped Saleem on the shoulder and bent down to check on Cecily. The infant gurgled and stared up at him with wide eyes. Did she have any idea what had just happened? Did she know she was in the middle of a battle?

He stood up again and surveyed the ramparts. There was no further sign of an assault from the west, but when he looked back into the fortress he could see the fight was continuing elsewhere. Immediately ahead of him, many of the rebels were still struggling to repel the centipedes slithering up the wall. Further off, he glimpsed the giant avatar rampaging through the ruins. And to his right, powder smoke had completely blotted out the top of the south wall. Tiny dots of flame from the muskets jabbed the fog, while the guns continued to flash.

Jack turned to Fletcher. ‘Turn the guns round. We have to be ready to fire into the fortress if the south wall is breached.’

Fletcher shouted the commands, and the four remaining guns were circled about. Jack considered locating the winch and moving the artillery pieces to the south. But that could take hours, and the centipedes would make the task almost impossible. Furthermore, there was always a chance Jhala would send yet another wave of attackers to the west side of the fortress. Someone had to remain to defend it.

Then Jack spotted a melee taking place at one of the gaps in the south wall. When he lifted the spyglass, he saw that a column of enemy troops had burst through the breach and were forcing their way into the interior of the fortress. Most of the attackers wore European Army uniform, but Jack also noticed several Rajthanan soldiers in turquoise tunics and turbans, along with officers carrying pistols and scimitars.

Rebels streamed down from the wall or rushed up from the ruins to confront the invaders. But the enemy troops fought back with knife-muskets and blades.

Then a blaze of green dazzled Jack for a moment. A second flash followed shortly afterwards.

Lightning.

Someone amongst the attackers was using Lightning.

Jack stared hard through the glass and spied a Rajthanan in a purple uniform flinging lightning bolts into the rebel defenders. The man was clearly a siddha.

Then Jack noticed a second man in purple. And finally a third man, half hidden by the haze, who was blasting bolts into the fortress. As this last figure strode out of the fog, Jack’s fingers tightened about the glass.

It was Jhala. The general himself had joined the attack.

It was unheard of for a general to take part in a battle, but then Jhala had never been an ordinary officer. As a captain he’d been in the thick of the fighting, even when that wasn’t entirely necessary. He’d been a champion wrestler and had even trained with his own European troops. Clearly, despite the years, he hadn’t changed. He was still determined to lead from the front.

And, beyond all this, he was obviously confident that his forces were on the verge of taking the fortress. He wouldn’t have risked joining the assault unless he was certain of success.

The rebels were now retreating from the breach and fleeing into the ruins. Jhala fired a couple more lightning bolts and then marched into the fortress, heading north, his troops filing behind him. The other two siddhas peeled off from the column and led a smaller force towards the centre of the ruins.

Jack lowered the glass. Jhala and the siddhas would be difficult to stop. The rebels faced defeat unless they could force the attackers back outside the walls. But that was looking less and less likely. Jhala and his men were advancing virtually unopposed.

Jack had to do something. Quickly.

He slung the musket on his shoulder and turned to Fletcher. ‘Keep an eye on both sides of the wall.’ He motioned towards Jhala and his men. ‘And be ready to fire on that lot, if they come this way.’

Fletcher nodded. ‘But you’ll be with us, though, won’t you, sir?’

‘I’ll try to be,’ Jack muttered. Then he faced Elizabeth and Saleem, saying, ‘You two stay here. I have to do something.’

Elizabeth frowned. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Just stay here,’ he snapped. The words sounded harsh but he had to make sure Elizabeth didn’t try to follow him. Then he gave her a tight smile and softened his tone. After all, this might be the last time he ever spoke to her. ‘You need to look after Cecily.’ He looked across at Saleem. ‘And both of you need to help defend this wall. The enemy could try another attack. We don’t know what else they could throw at us.’ He gazed back at Elizabeth and grasped her arm. ‘God’s grace to you. Take care of yourself.’

Before Saleem or Elizabeth could protest, he pushed past the men crowding around the battlements and ran down the walkway, heading south towards Jhala.

Jack jogged around the pyramids of shot, ammunition chests and milling rebels. Many men were still fighting off the centipedes with burning brands, muskets and even sponge staffs. But at least there seemed to be fewer creatures than before.

From time to time Jack scanned the fort for Jhala and his men. He couldn’t see them amongst the ruins, but the occasional flickers of green lightning guided him.

When he was about halfway along the wall, he reached a set of stairs and plunged down into the fortress. A few of the crusaders behind him called out, warning him to come back, but he ignored them. He reached the ground, glanced around and saw no centipedes nearby.

He swallowed. His throat was painfully dry. He’d had half a tankard of water the day before, and nothing at all so far today.

He charged across to the ruins and ducked down an alleyway. Hearing shouts and the popping of muskets, he struck off in the direction of the sounds. He wound his way through a series of roofless chambers, ducked through archways and shattered apertures, then skirted a tower. He occasionally spied centipedes in the distance, but he always managed to avoid them.

He came out suddenly in a wide boulevard. A firefight was taking place ahead of him. Rebels crouched behind the broken masonry, blasting with their muskets at the attackers at the far end of the avenue. Bullets criss-crossed the air, screamed off walls and kicked up spurts of dirt from the ground. Several wounded rebels lay near Jack. Another was wandering about in a circle, clutching his head and moaning.

A bolt of lightning suddenly roared down the boulevard and battered into a group of rebels. The men were knocked backwards and flung to the ground. Jack could smell the burnt flesh and clothing from where he was standing.

The lightning had to have been fired by Jhala.

Jack squinted into the smoke. His old commander was nearby.

A musket ball shrieked against the wall near his head, chipping the stone and spitting grit. He ducked back into the ruins and cast his eyes about. He had to stop Jhala. The general might be a powerful siddha, but he wasn’t invincible. If Jack could kill him, the assault might falter, or at least slow. That could give the rebels enough of a chance to fight back.

His eyes fell upon a small, domed building. It could have been a mosque at one time, although the stonework was so worn it was impossible to tell. From the roof of that building Jack guessed he would be able to see Jhala and his men.

Jack charged across to the structure and climbed up the side, thrusting through vines as he went. He stood on a ledge that encircled the dome and inched his way round until he could see down into the boulevard.

Jhala’s men were hiding behind the stonework and firing at the rebels through a cloud of powder smoke. Most of them were European Army soldiers, but there were also several Rajthanan officers wielding rotary pistols.

And then Jack gave an involuntary hiss. He’d spotted Jhala.

His old commander was standing towards the rear of the party. But at intervals, he would step out from behind a block of masonry and fling lightning at his opponents. And each time he did that, Jack could see him clearly.