Page 26

As they passed the city’s halfway point, Elo felt its rhythm change.

The stalls thinned to nothing, and the commonfolk were replaced by guards in Geralfi colours or with ibexes on their jackets, pushing carts of arrows and weapons, or bags of river sand.

The buildings clustered closer, lower as they neared the eastern edge, and Elo could smell smoke over the cool water of the falls: pitch and stone, ash and blood.

Soon after, they came to the first real barricade.

It was made from heavy crates, furniture, tables, someone’s bed, anything heavy.

There were barrels of water everywhere, along the edges of the street, high on the shingles of the houses, ready to be tipped over to quench the beginning of a burn.

It seemed the Talicians were already using fire on the wooden bridge-city. They must have a death wish.

That would make them harder to fight well.

Beyond the barricades, Elo could see the heights of the gate. Just. The doors had shattered off their hinges, and the gate itself hung in red banners, daubed in darker red with the shape of the bell. Hseth’s symbol. Elo hoped it wasn’t blood that had marked them, but he suspected it was.

They reached Geralfi guards, many of whom were sitting with their back to their barricades, sharing cups of tea or a pipe.

There was a long empty stretch between the makeshift defences and the Talician force, about the length of a good crossbow bolt, and the Talicians had many of those at their disposal, brought to pierce knights’ armour.

The two armies were at an impasse. Elo had no doubt that anyone stepping beyond the barricades would be met with a bloody end, stuck with shafts and feathers.

‘Lord Geralfi!’

A Geralfi guard was coming forward to meet them, hastily straightening the indigo surcoat that covered his mail and trying to hide his surprise at seeing his lord back on his own bridge.

His chin was scratched and bloody, as if it had hit the ground and been dragged several feet, but it was his palms that were bandaged.

Raw, Elo suspected, from swinging a sword.

His red hair, brighter than Kissen’s, was braided back from his face and down his neck, and he wore a cloth cap to protect it from his helm.

He stopped in front of Elo and did the Sunbringer salute, fingers splayed across his breast.

‘You must be Commander General Elogast,’ he said, bowing also to Tulenne, Yesef and Tiamh, who had followed in line. ‘Word precedes you. Thank you for those the king sent ahead, I can only apologise that they were too late, and we too ill prepared.’

‘This is Captain Larsen Maura,’ said Geralfi. ‘My wife’s cousin of the House Maura. Cousin, tell the commander general about our defences.’

‘We are holding strong, and pushing back where we can,’ said the captain. ‘The ranks of our guard have been bolstered with the help of a hundred from Craier and some local veterans.’

Larsen nodded in the direction of mid-aged folk, some of whom Elo vaguely recognised from the Fisher’s Stay. They looked different in their dented armour, and stared at him hard. Likely having difficulty placing the man who had sung a ribald song in their tavern as this knight in blue and steel.

‘Craier sent fighters?’ said Tiamh, genuinely surprised. ‘She’s not even here.’

‘The lady is honourable,’ said Geralfi, putting up a fight for the first time. ‘Her lands neighbour ours, and she knows the importance of this crossing. We have fifty from Benin too, though I understand that line is fallen?’

Elo felt his chest stiffen. They had word, also, from Peta, that the House Benin had retreated to Lesscia, their lands overrun; their lord’s head, its hair burned away, had been raised on a pike above the wall of his fortress.

Benin’s lands had been the last of the eastern Houses before Yether.

Once more, Peta and Yether had petitioned for the king’s aid, but Elo was now glad that he had advised against turning south.

‘Good,’ said Elo, ignoring Geralfi’s question. It was not for Elo to confirm or deny a House’s survival, not when the situation was so precarious. ‘This is a war we fight together. What weapons have you?’

‘Some pikes and spears,’ said Larsen, taking the interrogation in his stride, ‘but mainly swords, axes, bows.’ He touched his own battleaxe.

An antique; it looked like it had seen many fights.

‘Gefyris are archers, but the Talicians are fearless. They send boats from upriver, burning, sometimes with …’ his voice faltered.

‘With people on them. Sometimes ours, and sometimes their own. But the Talicians …’ He was competent, but his voice shook, ‘they set themselves alight and run into the city, taking people with them as they die.’

Elo put his hand onto Larsen’s arm. ‘You’ve done well,’ he said. ‘We’re here now.’ Larsen nodded, and Elo turned to Commander Tulenne.

‘Take forty fighters to the north docks,’ he said. ‘Support the command there and see what we can do about the runners.’

Tulenne looked about to protest, glancing at the front gate, his hand flexing on his sword, but he decided against.

‘Yes commander general,’ he said.

‘General Tiamh,’ said Elo, and he stood to attention.

‘Have your people bringing food and weapons to the front, and help where you can to shore up the blockades. Captain Benjen will assist with choke points going back through the city. Give the Gefyris a rest where you can. Commander Yesef.’ Kyaum was staring ahead at the Talician banners on Middrenite land.

Though they could not actually see Talicians, they were so close.

So very close. ‘I want yours at the front,’ said Elo, and she nodded.

‘Shields up. And relieve the current watch. Captain Geralfi, go with her and encourage your fighters.’ Geralfi made a bow to Elo.

Only time would tell if he would respect him or hate him, but at least he followed Yesef.

‘Larsen,’ Elo turned to the captain, who was swaying on his feet. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in three days. ‘Get some rest,’ said Elo. ‘We have more troops not far behind.’

‘I …’ Larsen began, then nodded. ‘Thank you, but first I need to show you something.’

‘Of course.’

Elo left the others to their orders and followed Larsen through the buildings south of the main street, downriver, where they stretched over the thundering waters of the great falls. Here, at the edge, the mist was thick, clinging to skin and sword.

They reached the walkway over the falls. To the west was the forest Elo had come through. He could see the shining battalions of the army, making it at last to the city they had come to defend, but this was not what Larsen wanted to show him.

The captain instead pointed east. On the other side of the waterfall was sheer rockface, as if the mountain had been sheared away by an axe.

There, the tanneries and slaughterhouses should have been working, releasing gusts of stink and smoke into the air.

Instead, the sky was woven through with thin trails of campfires, hundreds of them down and up the river, back into the distance.

The Talicians had brought a great host to this crossing, determined to destroy them all.

And on that bare stretch of the cliff face were bodies.

They had been stripped naked, some hung by the feet, others by the neck or arms; all of them bloody, their skin flayed in places, blackened with flame and terrible burns. The ropes had been carefully aligned so that the bodies hung in the shape of Hseth’s bell.

What terrible offering was this?

‘Some of them were still alive,’ whispered Larsen. ‘We’ve tried to shoot them down, but the fletching gets damp, and the Talicians return fire. Now, they are occupying the part of the bridge where we might have … might have reached them.’

He stopped, his eyes etched with exhaustion and horror. How many had he been forced to watch, writhing and twitching, gasping out their last? Most would have been tanners, known to the city, or guards from the eastern fortresses, captured before they could be killed.

Elo knew that look. He had felt it. That heart-crushed deadness that could become a beast of fury and eat him from the inside out.

That was what the Talicians wanted. An act of such cruelty had one purpose: to break their spirit.

That was truly the test of an army’s mettle, one against the other.

Not which was biggest, or strongest. The truth that finished a war was that of faith.

Whose would break first? Middren’s? Or Talicia’s?

Elo understood a little more why Arren had turned to clerics and song, sacrifices and godhead. Why he gave them something to hold on to, in the face of a god whose priests did … this.

Elo wished he could be like a god, and impart some strength to Larsen. He thought of Skedi and came up with a lie. Not a lie, a story. A hope.

‘I swear to you, captain,’ Elo said, hoping the lie would take, that he would believe him. That he would believe himself. ‘We will stop Talicia crossing the river. We will win.’