Page 31

Elo could see Kyaum Yesef fighting alongside the others as if she had been born with a sword in her hand. Good! Geralfi was not far from her, several rows back in a short tabard of green, scared but there. Elo was relieved, his doubts lifting. Tulenne had stayed in post.

No, there! Twenty rows back: a cloak in shining white and yellow. Too fine for a common soldier. Elo didn’t need to see the face beneath the helm to understand that the lord had decided he’d had enough of missing wars.

Fool! Why would the Talicians attack on two sides, when they could attack on three? So far, the fireships they had been sending downriver had been small, but under the cover of the trees of the east bank, who knows what kind of rafts they might have built?

‘Captain Benjen!’ Elo cried out. He had to tell Benjen and the others they might be running into a fight. ‘Benjen!’

But Benjen was too far away to hear him over the noise of the battle. His group broke out of the protection of their formation, heading for a side alley towards the docks.

A hail of crossbow bolts flew from the black.

Cilean died instantly. Benjen threw himself to the ground, but Lotta saw what was coming and did not duck, or hide, but moved in front of Perin. As Arren had done for Elo when they faced the god of war.

A bolt took him in the throat, the chest, the hand, piercing through his armour and slamming him into his husband.

Perin caught him, falling back.

‘Lotta?’ Elo saw, rather than heard, the question.

Only then did Perin understand what had happened.

Only then, with his husband already dead in his arms, did he realise that Lotta had used his last breath to protect him.

Perin screamed, but Benjen and Ainne were already back on their feet, dragging him back, back to safety.

‘No!’ Perin cried. ‘No, Lotta! I can’t leave him!’

More arrows came. Benjen pushed Perin down as a second wave slammed into the Middrenite force. Elo threw an arm around Elseber and dragged her head down, but the arrow meant for her struck the man behind through the cheek. Blood-splatter hot on his neck where the helm and his armour met.

‘Split up!’ cried Elo. ‘Left flanks, defend the docks!’

It was too complex an order to understand: a bare few obeyed before a charge from the north took their advance in the side, and tore a hole in them.

Elo could hear screaming all around him as the Talicians split their phalanx into front and back, exactly what he had hoped to avoid. He had lost sight of Benjen, of Elseber, of anything except sweat and bodies, blood and death. Their front had been crushed into a melee.

A sword glanced off his chestplate, tearing away some of the lapis of his lion.

An axe slid, sparking down the side of his helm, while a fist or a hammer – he couldn’t tell – slammed into the underside of his chin, where it was unguarded.

But he fought back, sword stabbing anyone, anything in red cloth, with bells in their hair and murder in their intent.

He could see hands and bodies, wide eyes and Talicians howling, screaming.

The Middrenites around Elo fought back, rallying after their surprise and pushing out of the crush.

Unlike the Talicians, many were veterans of the God War, no strangers to terror or clever strategy.

But they couldn’t hold for long against such a hammer blow.

How many more of the enemy would be coming from the river?

‘Get back to the docks!’ Elo yelled, hoping someone in the severed back half of the formation heard him as the pressure at his sides lessened and his force scattered into individual fights.

He glanced towards the gate. All around them was littered with bodies.

They had been so close. They were still so close.

But beyond the gates, Elo saw that perhaps they had never had a chance.

The gathered force of Talicians on the other side was larger than anything Elo had imagined.

Row upon row of fighters in red, all moving forward.

Not sparks from a fire this time but a wave of flame.

What had Hseth and her priests promised them, that they did not fear death?

Elo had heard of such cults in the long-ago past, in which some perfect afterlife was given to warriors of renown, where they would feast with their favoured gods.

But he had heard of no such thing from Talicia.

Were they now so in thrall to the god, so embedded in the life lived for her, that they saw no other way?

A large bell rang twice, and those nearest the gate stepped aside to reveal a large bronze statue borne on the shoulders of white-robed folk in plated chest armour.

A shrine. The sculpture was hollow, its eyes burning, mouth smoking through a grille set where its teeth should be.

Reports could not describe the horror of the glow of hot coal filling it up, turning its brass and briddite chest incandescent: enough to strike terror into the heart of any knight who had seen a god.

Hseth.

A set of soldiers in red jackets with white sashes were gathering the injured, the felled and still breathing.

From reports, these were not krka, the army leaders beneath the priests, but hvars, the rank below.

The priests’ assistants. They dragged those they captured towards the feet of the statue, not caring if they were Talician or Middrenite, struggling or barely moving.

All of them were brought to the feet of the bronze statue, and their cries cut short as their throats were slit.

Blood gushed over the statue’s feet, hissing where it stained.

‘Take down the statue!’ cried someone behind Elo, and a number of arrows flew past from the Middrenite roofs.

There were still some archers holding position.

One priest fell, buckling as an arrow found their throat, but a soldier immediately stepped in to lift the shrine before the fallen one was replaced by another in white.

‘No! Leave it!’ cried Elogast. He could see the Talicians raising their crossbows.

Even as he watched, two of his own soldiers were cut down by the bolts.

They needed to re-form some kind of defence, or they would be picked off, or overwhelmed by an attack.

‘Back to me! Protect each other. Lift any shield you can find.’

Arrows flew from the front now as well as the side, and now they had little to shield themselves against them, Elo ducked down, hunching into his armour. Two arrows glanced off him, and he whispered thanks to Naia, who had gifted him her plates.

His fighters were coming back, forming a protective unit as Elo dragged himself to his feet, holding up his sword. He flinched as he heard a woman scream before her throat was opened on Hseth’s shrine.

How much would it take for them to summon her?

‘Commander!’

He turned. It was Safidah, blood pouring from her nose, her head, her chin, spattered across her helm.

She had a shield on her arm, somehow she had kept it despite the crush.

‘We must fall back!’ She grabbed him by the shoulder, dragging him away from the gate, back to the rest of their battered force. But they both stopped.

There were Talicians on all sides, from the docks, from the gates, from the alleys. And Elo could see the rear half of the army retreating, running for the second barricade.

Leaving them to die.