The Year of Our War (36 page)

Tawny raised his arms and a division of five hundred fyrd clattered to their feet. They wrapped scarves around their faces as protection from splinters. They fetched picks, mattocks and trench-spades and started to chip at the wall. Its surface began to shatter like porcelain; it broke away in lumps from the objects suspended within. Bones, petrified branches, dented armor all emerged and broke off as the Lowespass men hacked.

“Many more survivors than I thought…” I said.

“There’s nine thousand six hundred of us,” he answered. “Fighters sought refuge here from, like, every town north of Awia.”

“Get them armed. Saker and Ata are here; we brought food. We brought
ships
. They have eleven thousand fyrd—but I don’t know how many will make it up the hill.”

“Then who died?”

I realized Tornado had felt the Circle break as well, and how terrible it must have been for him, incarcerated here without any news.

“Sleat the Blacksmith. And Shearwater Mist—in a storm.”

“It was an accident?”

I nodded.

“Eszai don’t die in accidents,” he said bluntly. “Mist was Plainslands, and he could look after himself. Jant, I tried to fight my way out of here, people were dying round me all the time. Vireo said better to sit and wait if there’s a chance we could save them.”

“Do any of the big catapults work?”

“We ran out of ammunition a long time ago. Just about the time I ate the last horse.” He raised his voice: “Vireo! Vireo! All of you—prepare to fight!”

Vireo ran from the spur-buttressed gatehouse. Her armor was styled to look like an Insect—big eye bulges on the sallet, a keeled breastplate like a thorax. She carried a spiked warhammer on a meter-long pole.

“Is this it?” she asked. “Comet, we had given up on you!”

“What did I tell you?” Tawny berated her. Then the muscle-bound maniac actually grinned. He was truly gigantic, living proof that Plainslanders fuck oxen.

Wondering how Tawny could have any men fit to do battle, I looked about and noticed a great heap of burned shell stacked by the stables. The shells were smashed, reddened, pale inside. It resembled the remains of a massive seafood feast.

“You’ve been eating
Insects
?”

“Little one, I don’t want to talk about it.”

But Insects eat people! “Aren’t they poisonous?”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!”

B
ack at the caravels, archers were pouring arrows in almost solid arcs onto the Insects, and akontistai on the decks hurled javelins. Under this cover, fyrd divisions in tight formation left the decks together, marched down the gangways onto the river bank, where they joined ranks with men from ships on left and right.

First out were spearmen, with their backups carrying bundles of spare spears, and pikemen with square shields beside them. With the bombardment from the vessels, they made space on the shore.

Their spears became clogged with skewered, contorting Insects, yellow fluid running down the shafts. They dropped their spears and were passed new ones. Then followed untrained polearms men with axes, pole-cleavers, and gisarmes. They wore helmets with aventail and latten plate armor over padded shirts. The crossbowmen had discarded their brigandines for cuirasses, and to their scale armor the Awians had added plate protection on their limbs. All were behind the heavy wall of square shields, the spears bristling like a Shift creature’s spines.

Ata left the gangway on her steel-clad courser. Too aware of her mortality, she kept three ranks of axmen in front of her, and I recognized one of her sons on either side of her chestnut horse. She was head-to-foot in polished, fluted plate with no crests, but its shine marked her out; she flourished the Wrought sword’s phenomenal blade.

With everything Ata knows about me I hope she doesn’t survive; in a battle any accident might happen, and it will if I get chance to pick up a crossbow. But Ata was keenly aware what I’m capable of, and I thought her sons were here not to protect her from Insects, but from me.

I drew my sword, searched for a space in this defensive phalanx, landed next to her. “Hear Tornado breaking the wall?” I shouted.

She gave a brief salute. “How many Insects?”

“Can’t count them! Thousands! Swarms!”

Ata could not see what I saw. It was like being in an anthill. Insects drained out of the whole valley toward us. They sped down the valley sides, out of the tunnels. Ata’s men were a knot of color surrounded for a quarter-k by a vast red-brown Insect tide.

I said, “It’ll be tight through the walls; follow me.”

A dark red Insect clawed at my face. I sliced its foot off.

The Hacilith men set up a howl, cut forward twenty meters; Ata made good use of the advance and directed the archers out from their positions on deck.

I
flew up to see Harrier’s archers on the left, Lightning on the far right. Lightning was mounted on a heavily armored hunter-clip white stallion, the one other horse. He only looked ahead; he had a dent in his cheek where the arrow nocks had pressed. The archers shot twelve flights a minute. How long could they keep up that rate of bombardment? There were more Insects than we had arrows!

Insects fell, cut apart, Insects ran madly away, arrows sticking out of them, but more crammed into the space they left.

Under cover of the archers fyrd surged forward and left the river bank. It took an hour to gain the foot of the hill.

Ata kept her men in one wide column, surrounded by shields in two staggered ranks. Then polearms men, chopping at Insects that got through. The sarissai’s spears were used up by now. Archers shot from the column center, but Lightning and Harrier’s divisions cleared space out in front. The crossbowmen were shooting to the rear. All attacked the climb full of energy, but were out of breath after the first few hundred meters. Breathing heavily, shouting less as the gradient increased, they plowed up, slashing at Insects.

A river of Insects descending the crag charged headlong, antennae waving. Lightning’s archers loosed, a hundred Insects dropped and the rest came on. I plummeted down, only thinking that I should aid the Zascai.

I
landed by a Hacilith soldier, who had a black bandanna under his helmet and broken-off mandibles embedded in his round shield. He brandished his poleax out at arm’s length, keeping two Insects at bay. The smaller one pounced at his throat; he swiped and cut through a feeler. The damp white nerve strand that ran down inside the antenna flopped out over its eye. It stumbled, scraping over his armor. The second Insect stabbed its jaws under his breastplate, between his ribs. It braced itself with six legs and pulled, dragging him forward.

I reached him as it tried to open its mandibles inside him. I smashed my sword into the globular knee-joint of a middle leg, shattering it. As the Insect shifted its weight onto the other five, I leaned back and with one long overhand swipe took its head off.

The soldier panicked when he recognized me. I took his hand; he coughed and tried to fend me away. His jagged chest wound sucked as he breathed in, then an artery ruptured. A blood cascade erupted from his mouth, gushing over breastplate, dead Insects, the ground. It frothed from his nose. With a look of terror, he mouthed through the bright red gouts. He fell to the ground and that was it—he bled to death in ten seconds, blood filling his lungs.

Twenty Insects scented the blood and closed in, clustered over him, heads moving, munching. I spread my wings and got out of there. After witnessing that, I will never take hallucinogens again.

O
ur host spread out to either side, spanning the hill. The vanguard was a mass of struggling, falling people. The rearguard bunched up away from the river. The column continued to advance, leaving spiky arrays of dead Insects and severed human limbs. Insects pounded down from every lair in the landscape, eager to feed.

“Ata!” I shouted. “Go left here, around the edge of this wall. Go along the wall. Then right. Climb up to where you see a gap.”

Ata urged her horse on.

I said, “For god’s sake don’t let them move apart. The gap is very narrow.”

I watched as the columns passed between low, broken Insect walls. Teams of men between the columns planted sharp stakes in the ground, until every breach bristled with staves. The first charging Insects impaled themselves, the rest had to slow to pick their way through.

Harrier’s archers on the left dropped their rate of shooting to ten per minute, then to six. Insects gained ground on them and started preying on their line.

“Go see Harrier!” Ata shouted to me.

“You want me to be everywhere!”

“Yes!
Be everywhere!
”

V
olleys of arrows flew up, tilted at their zenith, dropped onto the Insects. Another cloud of arrows buzzed beneath me, and another.

Harrier raised a hand, fingers spread. “Comet! Five minutes! Five minutes’ worth of arrows left! That’s all! Help me!”

I turned back, found the captain of the Hacilith crossbowmen behind in the column, and directed the whole crossbow division through Harrier’s ranks, to spread out in front of them, “Make way! Move down—let them through!”

“Out of arrows!”

“Out of arrows!” Harrier’s voice.

Harrier’s five hundred men simultaneously dropped their bows behind them and drew their swords.

Insects slammed into their ranks. The archers’ solid line flexed, then Insects intermeshed into their edge like into a forest. The ranks disintegrated, Insects moving through and over them. Men were shoved together; the line dissolved into single men against Insects. Archers were struggling, disappearing. The crossbowmen started up.

I heard cracking as the Insects fractured archers’ bones. Awians have hollow limb bones, which are tough, but cracked with a higher tone than human bones and splintered to shards in arms, legs and wings.

An Insect pulled the man next to Harrier out of the line, ripping his cheek open to bone and teeth. It raised a sharp claw, and unzipped his stomach from hip to chest. The archer screamed, wrapped both arms around his waist, his long coat slick with blood. Harrier slashed the Insect’s abdomen to gluey yellow ruin; it lunged at him, quivered and collapsed.

The crossbowmen found their pace. The first line shot, stepped back, kicked their bows down to span and reload. The next two lines came forward and loosed, sending a barrage of bolts against the swarm.

Harrier looked, bewildered, to the scattered dead, the surviving longbowmen, then up at me. “Thank you,” he said.

T
he Awndyn fyrd at the rear were under a lot of strain from Insects running uphill, and they didn’t stand it long. I know what their blank faces meant. Suddenly Insects are the size of god. They have god’s power. Fighting is not an option. “They’re not invincible!” I shouted desperately. “Don’t run!”

I stopped and soldiers ran straight on underneath. A handful reached the river bank, and disappeared into a villagers’ pitfall trap that was already full of Insects.

“Shit.”

I reached Ata. “We’ve lost the Awndyn division!”

“They’ll draw Insects away. Order a crossbow division back; I don’t want the rear to degenerate into skirmishes. Keep going up!” Ata called for the troops to stay together as the slope became rocky. Vireo’s archers inside the keep were shooting from the towers’ wide windows high over our heads, thinning out the Insects reaching us.

I led the column up onto the saddle of the hill. It narrowed as the men marched between two low walls, which swept round in a long curve. The outer wall ended in rubble, leaving the inner wall an unbroken white surface. Tawny’s men were hewing a hollow out of the far side.

I circled, wings beating furiously. “Break through here.”

The front of the column milled around, calling over the wall. Shouts answered from the other side:

“Hello?”

“Yo! Hello!”

“We’re nearly through!”

“I don’t think they can hear us.”

“Hello! Hello, hello, hello!”

“Are you from Rachis?”

“From Hacilith! How many is there?”

“All of fucking Lowespass, mate.”

“Lightning is here. Eszai are here.”

“Watch out for Insects they come up the ditch!”

“Get back in your
places
!” Ata screamed. “Keep the shield line!”

Lightning ordered his archers to the peripheries of Ata’s wall-breakers. Her crossbowmen formed a semicircle around them, two hundred meters wide, facing outward with their backs to the wall. I spiraled up, directly above.

A mighty crash—the wall-breakers burst through—the wall began to collapse. Men shouted—hands appeared from the other side and grabbed Ata’s hands frantically. They started to widen the breach.

Ata left her horse and pushed her head into the gap. “Make space! Come through here! Spread out on the hill! Fall in; we’ll start back to the ships straight away.”

Part of Tornado was visible through the breach. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

“But? We’re here to get you out!”

I landed by him. “What are you planning?”

His Lowespass fyrd emerged in a long thick chain, carrying arrow-sheaves out of the breach. Those inside chucked sheaves over the wall to distribute among Lightning’s fyrd. Tornado and Vireo squeezed through, surveyed Ata’s host excitedly as the fortress troops jostled out to join them. “Look at all these warriors! Just think what we can do with so many, Vireo!”

“Who’s the leader?” Vireo asked.

“I am,” said Ata.

Vireo regarded Ata as a fellow mortal. “We won’t forget your courage. But Tornado’s in charge now.”

“You can’t do that!” Then Ata saw Tawny and me agreeing, and she let the giant take over without another word.