Page 30

ELOGAST WAS RESTING IN HIS ARMOUR, LEANING AGAINST a wall in one of the houses they had cleared and moved into; a safe place to sleep.

It had been two weeks since they had arrived in Gefyrton.

With appalling regularity, flaming boats arrived from upriver with cargos of screaming, burning bodies.

But Tulenne had succeeded in his task of holding them off, sinking them from afar.

Very few made it to the docks, lucking into the right streams that allowed the vessels to be carried forward without shattering on the rapids.

Elo didn’t know which he hated more, the smell of burning flesh, or the sight of the rotting corpses on the southern cliff face. Even hardened fighters couldn’t bear to keep the south watch where the bodies fell, piece by piece, to be set upon by river rats where they landed.

Still, Arren had tried calling him back to the west gate, to rest in safety, but Elo had refused. Politely this time. He would not abandon his post.

And they had reached a rhythm, beating the Talicians back with planned assaults, step by step, pushing them towards the gate.

But when he heard the first horn – three sharp blasts – Elogast knew he had grown too confident in that rhythm: a Talician attack had broken through.

He opened his eyes. The darkness around him flickered with lamplight, and so did the sky beyond the windows. Night had fallen, and the city was on fire.

He leapt to his feet, not even pausing to shed his dreams. ‘Up! Up!’ he cried.

Everyone camped near him rattled to their feet, already clad in whatever armour they had. Benjen’s weary eyes met Elo’s, and he drew his sword.

‘With me!’ ordered Elo.

He led them out of their shelter and back onto the main street, where they entered chaos.

The south side of the town was aflame over the falls.

‘Commander!’ Perin was running up to him through the dark, blood on his chest and a horn around his neck. He must have sounded the alarm. ‘They climbed down the southern face and up onto the bridge,’ he said. ‘Six buildings are burning. We’ve sent fire crews …’

The side with the bodies, where the soldiers hated watching, where no other attacks had come.

Where they had expected the raging of the water and the slick great beams of the undercity to deter any foolish climber.

How many Talicians had died falling before they made it high enough to set the buildings aflame?

‘Leave the fire,’ said Elo, though he could feel its heat. ‘Gather to the centre.’

‘Elo, we can’t let the bridge burn,’ said Benjen urgently.

Elo pulled on his helmet where it sat snug on his braids.

He could see now how it would play out. While they were distracted between dousing the flames and finding who had lit them, the Talicians would charge in and split their force, breaking them at the centre and routing them in panic. Panic would end them.

‘They mean to scare us,’ he said, striding not south to the water, but east towards the gate.

‘Few of them could have climbed up without being spotted. Sound the gather for the centre and let the water deal with the fire. We have barrels of it on the roof, on the bridge supports, and a waterfall around us.’ He put his hand on Benjen’s shoulder.

‘You asked me to lead you,’ he said. ‘Trust me then. My life, my blood, my heart.’

Benjen swallowed, and nodded. ‘Sound the gather, Sergeant Perin,’ he said. ‘That’s an order from our commander.’

Perin hesitated a moment longer, but lifted his horn and sounded a long blast, then a second rising at the end.

‘To me!’ Elo cried, starting to run now as the others gathered. Middrenite fighters were gathering from all sides, from the buildings, from the alleys, from the inns and wherever they had slept for the night. ‘To the gate! Form a battalion, leave the fire!’

Yesef, Safidah, and a riot of House guards, knights and common soldiers spilled into the centre, shifting aside the barricade and forming lines of four, quickly becoming a fighting unit still protected by the blockade on either side.

Somehow, Elogast had managed to cobble together some coherence from Arren’s patchwork army, but how long would it last?

The flames were roaring from the south, and he flinched as a building collapsed, fire chewing through the beams. What if he was wrong?

What if the fire took hold? What if his instinct led the city to burn?

No. He was right. To his relief and terror: he was right.

Through the red flags of the eastern gate, charged the Talicians in wild force, blood and charcoal smearing their faces, bells shining in their hair.

They carried torches that seared an orange glow out of the night of mist and smoke, as if they came shrouded and veiled.

Most held shortswords, but many had axes, picks, clubs and makeshift weapons.

They ran without formation, without sense.

Was that a child? An old woman? It did not matter, it only mattered that they were enemies.

‘Lock in line!’ Elo screamed. ‘Shoulder to shoulder. Hold!’

Somehow, those that heard him carried forward the command. ‘Hold!’

The Talicians faltered, seeing through the barricades not chaos but an organised defence.

‘For Sunbringer!’ Elo yelled, locking himself into the centre of the battalion as rows formed up behind him.

‘Sunbringer!’ called Benjen to his right, Elseber to his left, and another whom Elo did not know. ‘Fireheart!’

Elo could feel the terror of the fighters around him. It clung to him like sweat, prickling across his skin. Cilean, Lotta, Perin, Larsen, Ainne, – he could see them in the phalanx. Elo had made combined units, teaching them common practices, common goals.

Together, they were stronger.

‘Brace!’

The Talicians broke around them, howling as they tried and failed to smash through their wall of defence.

The fighters at the edge held up shields and planks and whatever they found, and the second one in thrust their swords through the gaps, lacking as they were in pikes and spears.

Like sparks spat from an errant fire, the Talicians were extinguished against the wall of iron.

Elo couldn’t think of the enemy as people.

Not the girl whose face he tore open with a strike from his longsword, not the old man with a splintered spear and the hungry eyes who was still writhing over the stomach wound Elo had left him.

He wished he was fighting gods. It was easy to see the wolf that tore through their ranks in Blenraden as a nightmare, a dream.

The skeletal horse, the stag-headed god of war, the god of the hunt with his screaming mouth and endless arrows.

At least each one didn’t remind him of Kissen, of Ina, of Benjen, of Arren.

Elo’s arms grew weary with the strike of sword in flesh, his ears filled with guttural cries as humans found their death upon a blade.

The flames on the southern roofs were fading. Wet wood didn’t burn well. Not without Hseth. And they hadn’t summoned her yet.

They had a chance here. And Elo would take it. ‘Forward!’ he yelled, and he heard Perin’s horn behind him picking up the order with a sharp blast then a long.

The night grew hot and thick with screams as they pushed into the Talician onslaught, heading back towards the gate.

All was panic and shadow. Arrows flew down from either side as the attack intensified.

Ringing bells from beyond the gates, and indiscernible howled orders drove the Talicians onwards, stumbling onto the boards to meet their end.

A sparse few made it past. They sprinted into the shadows of the alleys to the north and south, where they would soon be picked up by the archers on the roofs: Tiamh’s second line of defence. Tulenne’s contingent guarding the north docks would protect against further surprises.

‘Forward!’ Elo cried again. As one force, they moved.

Elo felt the shivering of the bridge’s timbers as a hundred feet shifted.

Forward. A step. Another, another. How many more till the gate?

If they took advantage of the Talician fear and confusion, could they take the city?

Take back their land? Push the enemy back to the Bennites to starve?

‘Forward!’

A cheer went up from the Middrenites as they realised they were moving further and further beyond their forward barricade. Let them cheer. Soon they would feel what Elo felt: the bodies beneath his feet, the bones of fallen friends and enemies. With luck, they were dead already.

No stopping. Forward: towards the gate, towards reclamation.

Whenever a gap formed, a Middrenite filled it, so that the Talicians would never know how many they had killed, how many remained.

They pressed further onto the occupied bridge, and Elo could hear the panicked cries of Talician krkas, possibly even their priests.

Forward.

Slow step by slow step, strike by strike Every minute felt like aeons as they took on the fight. Elo was rooted in the storm, people he trusted at his side. His people.

Hope, he felt it. They were going to take the gate. Gefyrton was theirs.

But something was wrong. It shouldn’t be this easy. He saw no priests, no kerls, no statues of Hseth that Kissen and the reports from the south and east had described.

This couldn’t be all of their main force.

‘Benjen,’ Elo hissed to his companion, spitting sweat and blood from his mouth. ‘Take ten to the docks. Make sure Tulenne is maintaining their defence.’ What if their northern defence had heard the horns and come to the centre? What if there was no one watching the banks?

‘Aye commander,’ said Benjen, understanding. He turned to Lotta, Ainne and Perin behind them, whispering the need for a swift exit from the formation.

Elo glanced behind him, trusting Elseber to his left to defend his side while the gaps left by Benjen and the others were filled. She had a slash across her face, but grinned as she stabbed a Talician in the armpit.