Unholy War (43 page)

Their wagon came apart as they struck the rocks at the base of the tower and the men gritted their teeth and swallowed their alarm as they thrashed about until they found their footing and managed to clamber up the slippery weed-encrusted boulders to the base of the walls.

The next ‘boat’ struck and they helped the newcomers up, then the next and the next. There were eight men to each wagon-base, and seven wagons deployed for the purpose. Wilbrecht deployed his sylvanic gnosis to shore up the wagons while Hulbert, the Hollenian Water-mage, guided the craft. Jelaska was here to do – well, whatever it was she did; something nasty and sorcerous, Kip supposed.

He met Wilbrecht’s eye. The wagons fixed, the Brevian had a bow nocked and gnosis ready-kindled on the arrowheads. A cheating way to kill, Kip had always thought.
Typical of a race who wear skirts
…

‘Ready?’ Wilbrecht rasped.

‘Yar! Always, little man. Don’t point that thing near me.’ He rotated his right shoulder, flexed his biceps and glanced at Jelaska. ‘How do we get in?’

The haggard Argundian woman jabbed a thumb towards a bridge that crossed the central channel and joined the two island-forts. ‘Weren’t you listening to the briefing?’ she said scornfully. ‘That way, up onto the bridge and in. I’ll follow when I’m ready.’

‘Yar, yar, I was listening,’ Kip lied.
Details are for small people. I’m here to fight
. He bowed his head and muttered a prayer – though not in any hope of having it answered. The Schlessen gods were vindictive bastards who didn’t answer prayers, but they were sure to punish those who
didn’t
pray. Mostly they wanted blood, and it was always best to offer someone – or some
thing
– else’s.
Minaus Bullhead, hear me! A calf, burned for you when I return home. This I swear.
He reckoned he currently owed the god about seventy beasts, more than he could hope to own in a lifetime.

‘Kore will protect us,’ Wilbrecht said, smugly sure that
his
god
did
answer prayers.

‘Kore? Neyn, Kore has no power here. In battle there is only the Bullhead.’ Kip drew his sword, kissed the blade. ‘Let us go and find some of these Dokken, yar? See if they can fight.’ Schlessen legends were full of them, snatching babies and killing the unwary: fairy tales, he’d always thought. ‘Let’s see how they like cold steel.’

They clambered around the base of the walls, their movement masked by the clamour at the gates, though they could see people moving above them. Perhaps Jelaska was concealing them, because no one called out or raised an alarm. In a few moments they were beneath the central span. A wagon rolled past as Wilbrecht joined him. ‘We move as the gates are opened for the wagon,’ he breathed, his voice calm. ‘Save us the trouble of knocking on the door.’

Kip grinned.
Good man, this, for a skirted Kore-kisser.

The signal came seconds later, a mental command from Jelaska. Kip soared upwards with a kinetically enhanced leap and landed square on the bridge, the stone solid beneath his feet and a dark shape before him. He glimpsed a swarthy face and thrust, the blade of his sword going into the man’s mouth and out the back of his head.

He kicked the corpse away.
For you, Bullhead.

There was more shouting, and a mage-bolt seared past his shoulder, missing everyone. It came from somewhere above, but there was no time to look; he was already storming into the loosely spread enemy soldiers, a two-handed sweeping blow hacking down a Keshi archer partway through drawing his bow.

‘Minaus!’ he bellowed, surging onwards. Wilbrecht had gone the other side, his bow-string thrumming, and he felt more gnosis-blasts shaking the air. Another Keshi, this one armed with a curved sword, erupted from a doorway, but he blocked, took a slash on his mailed arm that barely tore the skin, battered down the man’s guard and thrust six foot of straight steel into his guts. The Keshi looked down with panicked eyes that rolled back up into his skull as he slid to the ground.

‘
MINAUS! THE BULLHEAD IS HERE! VORWAERTS!
’ he bellowed at the Pallacians swarming onto the bridge behind him as he made for the gates. Wilbrecht appeared from the far side of the wagon, arrows flying as he cut down the fleeing enemy.
Yar, in the back,
he thought.
Typical Brevian!
They pounded forward together, through the gates, one hacking, the other shooting down the remaining gatemen, and found themselves in a small square from which narrow streets wound away in all directions. Wilbrecht lit an arrow with gnostic fire and sent it blazing into the air. It burst into flame: the signal that they were inside the northern keep.

A few seconds later another rose from the south side of the river in answer, and hundreds of torches sprang into light as the Khotri army surged along the southern causeway.

*

As the signal-arrows arced gracefully through the sky, Baltus Prenton laughed aloud and sent his windskiff slewing gracelessly past the southern island. He was struggling to guide it, for the little vessel had twenty legionaries clinging to ropes and hanging from the sides. Ramon Sensini, in the prow of the skiff, peered down anxiously, but although an array of terrified faces turned his way as the craft staggered through the air, no one had yet fallen off.

‘Hold on boys, nearly there!’ Ramon called, his eyes on the southern fort’s outer gate-towers. He could see a strong force there, with ten or more robed figures wrapped in faintly visible gnosis shields, and dozens of archers, but the ballistae platforms had been emptied and the deadly apparatus dismantled and moved to the northern gate for the assault the Dokken were anticipating there.

They were certain the Khotri wouldn’t get involved: chalk up one for the plan.
He selected a robed shape, presumably a Dokken, who was clearly in view and oblivious to the cloaked skiff passing right by him in the darkness. His mage-bolt streaked across the sky, a narrow thrust of pure destructive energy, ripped through the unfocused shield and punched a coin-sized hole in the Dokken’s chest before burning out the other side. The Dokken collapsed with a grunt as his colleagues around him shouted in alarm, and the sky lit up.

Baltus laughed again, and banked away, leaving the counter-strikes ripping harmlessly at his rear shields: the Dokken, too concerned with protecting themselves, failed to factor in the windskiff’s speed, so the vessel lumbered past untouched. Not that Baltus’ manoeuvring was much appreciated by the men clinging to the ropes below the hull.

‘Fuck! Fly straight, can’t you?’ someone wailed.

‘Enjoy the view,’ Ramon shouted back unsympathetically and grinned at Baltus at the chorus of cursing that arose in response.

He scanned the way ahead, using his gnostic sight to penetrate the darkness. The wagon-boats were clustered around the northern island, beneath the bridge just as planned. He grinned.
Phase two, right on schedule!
Buona fortuna,
Kip!

Beyond the northern keep he could see the causeway was filled with torchlight, and now the noise reached him: the crescendo of battle that had haunted his dreams since Shaliyah. Baltus sent the skiff climbing ponderously towards the highest tower, and Ramon reached down with his left hand and fed his own gnosis into the keel to help the overloaded skiff. Even with the two of them working to keep it on course it was wobbling badly and they careened over the battlements with just inches to spare. There was a great flash of flames from the northern gatehouse and Ramon suddenly caught sight of thousands of men fighting on the causeway.
Come on, Vaas!
he cried to himself,
keep them pinned!

Baltus brought the skiff about and hovered it about ten feet above a roof-top garden. They could all see that there were several Keshi archers stationed there, but the cloaking spell had worked and they were only just starting to look up. ‘Go-go-
go
!’ Baltus called urgently, and Ramon leaped out, using Air-gnosis to steady his fall.

Behind him Lukaz’s cohort released their grips on hull and ropes and dropped, yelling in fear and exhilaration. The skiff, suddenly unburdened and filled with energy, shot upwards, while twenty-one bodies struck the roof-garden’s grass and flowerbeds and twisted and rolled to their feet. Ramon heard at least two men cry out in pain as they landed, but he had other things to focus on as he struck the ground between two Keshi archers who were just spinning around to deal with this new threat.

‘
Arrivederci
!’ he shouted, and flipped his hands. Using telekinetic force he hurled the hapless guards over the parapets, then fired off a mage-bolt at another. The blue fire made the man’s ribs glow as his chest burst apart. Then Kel Harmon landed beside him, the flankman all grace and power as he slashed his shortsword through another man’s bow and into his shoulder. The archer staggered and Harmon flipped him over the edge.

The rest of the cohort had found their feet except for Holdyne, who was rolling around, clutching his right ankle and yowling in agony, and Hedman, who was silently cradling his arm to relieve a dislocated shoulder. The few remaining Keshi on the rooftop tried to make a run for the stairs, but Lukaz gestured and the cohort ranged forward. Harmon’s blade was a flickering blur as it tore out the first Keshi’s throat in an eye-blink, while young Trefeld and big Manius combined to cut down another. Vidran launched a javelin that took another man through the back and pinned him to the wooden door until rat-faced Bowe wrenched the Keshi off the door and threw him to the ground, then punched his sword through his breastplate, just to make sure. The last man, seeing the cohort closing in, chose instead to jump, wailing, from the parapet. Ramon went to the edge and peered down. They were about five flights up. Even in the dark he could see the man, an ungainly heap in a narrow street below.

He turned back, and shouted to Lukaz, ‘Find a way inside!’

While the flankers dragged Holdyne and Hedman to cover, Lukaz got the front ranks into formation facing the corner doorway. An arrow whistled past Ramon’s face and glanced off Lukaz’s shoulder as someone shouted in Keshi from a neighbouring building. Ramon threw up his wards just in time to block another flight of arrows and the cohort hit the ground in tortoise formation, their shields interlocked and covering them all. More arrows flew, but their tortoise shell held as the wickedly barbed points slammed into the wood and bossing. Ramon, in the middle of the huddle, kept his head down, feeling the the tension as the enemy kept hammering the shield-wall. Then an arrow pierced it, eliciting an agonised hiss from Kent, who stared at the shaft in his thigh, then slowly sagged to the ground.

‘Dolmin, Ferdi, see to Kent,’ Lukaz shouted. ‘Vid, find me a way out of here!’

‘Boss, there’s stairs to a lower terrace,’ Vidran called laconically. ‘The archers will lose their line of sight.’

‘But there’s a door this side too!’ Bowe shouted back.

‘Hold positions!’ Lukaz shouted, grabbing Bowe’s arm to keep him inside the formation. ‘We’ll take the stairs on Vid’s side.’

‘Then make it soon,’ Manius shouted as more arrows struck. ‘Someone farted back here.’ A chorus of jeers and denials rose from that side and Ramon smiled to himself.

Lukaz’s voice remained calm. ‘Vid, call the steps! Lads, keep the shields locked! Ferdi, bring Kent!’

The next minute felt like hours as more arrows found the gaps between shields, but the men were armoured as well as shielded and apart from a graze on Trefeld’s forearm and a scratch on Briggan’s cheek, they got to the staircase unscathed and clattered down into another garden area a level down. Away from the rain of arrows, Ramon could hear muffled shouting and the rattle of latches on doors, then on the far side of the garden a crowd of armoured men burst through the doors Bowe had pointed out and pounded towards them.

‘Fuckin’ Noories!’ Bowe screamed as the cohort wheeled and the front rank presented shields and spears. Years of drilling had made their responses automatic; they fell into position effortlessly and the ranks were formed and flankers ready seconds before the Keshi charge reached them.

Ramon stood up, his shields bursting into light about him, and slammed a mage-bolt into the lead man an instant before the rest of the Keshi men struck their line. For the next few moments he was totally unnecessary. Every man in the cohort knew exactly what he was doing; moving almost as one they slammed their shields and spears into the faces of the enemy with brutal force, and though more and more Keshi were piling in behind the first-comers, the cohort took one step forward, then another, each one called by Lukaz and echoed by Baden the bannerman. They stepped and thrust, stepped and thrust, and the powerful rhythm helped to power them forwards. The Keshi with their slashing swords and small shields could not contain them and were soon giving ground as sheer muscle and bodyweight turned the tide: the front rankers, led by Manius and Dolmin, were simply too big and strong for the smaller foe.

In a few moments Ramon, at the heart of the formation, was stumbling over the dead and maimed bodies of the fallen. The second rank were stabbing down into the corpses with brutal efficiency to ensure there’d be no nasty surprises left behind them. The flankmen were cutting down any Keshi that came at them from the side, as they swept forward. Then Vidran called the switch and the second rank stepped through, their momentum making the change deadly effective. The few Keshi still managing to hold their ground were cut down as those behind gave way in a sudden despairing wail. At Lukaz’s signal the flankers pushed out and forward, forming a pincer movement, and with Harmon and dark-skinned Ollyd cutting a swathe, the Keshi were forced back into the stairwell from where they’d emerged.

Then the Keshi broke and blood sprayed everywhere as those who tried to run were savagely cut down from behind. Vidran reached the doors just as they were slammed in his face by those Keshi who had got below. Lightning crackled along the frame and the rankers stepped away and looked at Ramon.

‘It’s just a warding,’ he panted. He extended his gnostic senses. ‘It’s not overly strong – you could break it down just by bashing at it, though it’ll take a little time.’