Part 31 (1/2)

'Good point,' Bardas said. 'But let's keep it up a while longer. I want them to feel the pressure.'

So this is what it was like, Temrai said to himself, waiting for the next shot to fall. Well, now I know.

The shot landed, a heartbeat late, making the ground shake. Because of the dust-cloud, he couldn't see where it had pitched or whether it had done any damage; it was as bad as being in the dark. But he could hear shouting, implying an emergency - someone was giving orders, someone else was contradicting him; there was an edge of raw urgency to their voices that didn't inspire confidence. Should have antic.i.p.ated this, he thought. Didn't. My fault, ultimately.

He counted down from twelve, and the next shot pitched. He could feel where that one went (when you're in the dark, the other senses adapt quickly) - presumably an overshot, strictly speaking a miss, but it felt like it had landed on one of the stores. I'd rather it was the biscuits than the arrows; we can eat broken biscuits if we have to. He started counting again.

'Temrai?'

d.a.m.nation, lost count. 'Over here,' he called out. 'Who's that?'

'Me. Sildocai. Where are you? I can't see a thing.'

'Follow my voice, and keep your head down; one's due any second now.'

Another overshot; no prizes for guessing where it had gone either, as it sprayed sharp-edged chips of rock across the catwalk. 'Their settings must be shaking loose,' he observed. 'They can't see the pitches, so they don't know they're going high.'

'I preferred it when they were on target.'

'So did I.'

Sildocai materialised in front of him, as if he'd been moulded out of the dust. 'I've been down there,' he said. 'Since they started shooting high, I reckoned it was the safest place to be. They've smashed up four trebuchets and half a dozen of the scorpions, two more of each out of action for now but fixable. The worst part is, there's a d.a.m.n great hole in the path which we're going to have to fill somehow. Otherwise we're completely cut off from the lower defences.'

Temrai closed his eyes. 'Well, there ought to be enough loose rock and spoil,' he said. 'You'll need to lay timbers to hold the loose stuff in, anchor them with pegs like you're building a terrace.'

'All right,' Sildocai said, coughing. 'When we've done that, what about hauling some of the engines up out of the way? They're doing no good down there, just waiting to be smashed up.'

Temrai shook his head. 'No, we won't do that,' he said. 'They'll just bring theirs up closer. We need to shut those trebuchets down for a while, and if we can't reach them with artillery, we'll have to go over there and do it by hand.'

Sildocai frowned. 'I'd rather not do that,' he said, 'even with the light cavalry. It's a bit too flat for charging down the enemy's throat.'

'We haven't got any choice,' Temrai replied, as another shot pitched, scooping up loose dirt and sprinkling it over their heads, the way the chief mourner does at a funeral (although it's customary to die first). 'We're outranged. If we sit here and do nothing, they'll flatten the whole thing.'

'All right,' Sildocai replied doubtfully. 'But let's at least wait until it gets dark and they stop shooting.'

'What makes you think they'll stop when it gets dark? I wouldn't. If they fix their settings, they don't need to see us in order to smash us up. They're doing a pretty good job as it is, and this dust is as good as a dark night.'

'Yes, but it's only dusty over here. I'd rather not ride up on their archers in broad daylight, thank you very much. You may not remember, but there's bright sunlight outside all this muck.'

Temrai thought for a moment. 'Fair enough,' he said. 'I'm not thrilled at the thought of having to sit through three more hours of this, but you're right, we don't want to do their job for them by making silly mistakes. Get a raiding party organised, and then put someone on making good that path. n.o.body's going anywhere till that's fixed.'

Sildocai scrambled away, trying to keep his head down below the level of the earth bank into which the stakes of the stockade had been driven. It meant scuttling like a crab, or a man in a low-roofed tunnel. Another shot pitched, but too far away to be a danger to him. Very erratic now, Temrai decided, but I don't suppose they care; this is just to make us feel miserable. The damage is probably trivial, but this dust is starting to get on my nerves.

'No mucking about,' Sildocai said, a stern, parental expression on his face. 'The only thing we're interested in is the trebuchets; cut the counterweight cables, then when the beam comes down cut the sling cables, and that's it. Just this once, getting back in one piece is more important than killing flatheads, so no wandering off, no hot pursuit and categorically no looting. Understood?'

n.o.body spoke. By the look of it, his dire warnings had been largely unnecessary. Chances were they'd only volunteered in the hope of getting away from the dust for an hour.

It was a typical plains moon, bright enough to cast shadows. That was good. From here he could see the camp-fires across the river, where they were going. Men sitting in the firelight don't have good night vision, whereas his men would have had time to get accustomed to the dark; they'd be able to see the enemy, and the enemy wouldn't see them. He gave the sign, and the winch crew started to wind the swing-bridge into place.

Sildocai went first. It was tradition in his family, which had produced more than its share of commanders; so many, in fact, that it was remarkable that it had lasted this long. His own father had been killed fighting this same Bardas Loredan, shortly after Maxen died. His grandfather had also fallen in battle against the Perimadeians. His great-grandfather had gone the same way, though n.o.body could remember who he'd been fighting against. Four generations of brave leaders who always led from the front. Some people never learn.

Getting there was no problem; just head for the nearest cl.u.s.ter of camp-fires until he could make out the trebuchets, silhouetted against the blue-grey sky. There was just enough wind to carry away the sound of the horses' hooves on the dry gra.s.s. All in all, ideal conditions for a night attack; it was almost enough to tempt him into ignoring his own excellent advice and go looking for a fight, except that he didn't want one. There'd be plenty of time for that sort of thing later; besides, his men were tired after a bad day divided between cowering under the dust-cloud and hauling dirt in buckets to fill in the hole in the path uphill.

They did better than he'd expected; they were fifty yards from the nearest fire by the time someone saw them and shouted. Sildocai drew his scimitar, called out, 'Now!' and kicked his horse into a gentle canter.

It started well. Understandably, the enemy ran away from the suddenly materialising hors.e.m.e.n, heading for the weapons stacks, away from the trebuchets, and n.o.body bothered the raiding party until they'd done some useful work among the trebuchets. That would have been a good time to quit.

Sildocai was the first to cut a rope; it took him three attempts. It was almost comical. Somehow he'd pictured himself cleaving the rope with a single blow, slicing through the taut fibres almost without effort. Instead, he caught it at an awkward angle, jerked his wrist and nearly dropped the sword. He'd have been better off with a bill-hook or a bean-hook, a heavier, more rigid blade. His adventure nearly ended there; in his grim determination to hack through the rope he forgot that cutting it would result in a long, heavy piece of wood pivoting sharply downwards - the beam missed his shoulder by no more than a couple of inches, and startled the life out of him. Then, as he pulled his horse round, he found he couldn't quite reach the sling on the other end; he had to jump off his horse, kneel down, saw through it with the forte of his sword blade, and then hop back up again (except that his horse was spooky and didn't want to hold still, and he spent an alarming moment or two dancing beside a moving horse, one foot in the stirrup, the other dragging on the ground while he clung to the pommel of the saddle with one hand and tried not to drop his scimitar with the other).

But he was a grown-up, he could cope; and he made a rather less messy job of the next two trebuchets. In fact, he was feeling confident enough to be toying with the idea of trying to get the things to burn when the enemy finally showed up. That was the point at which he should have let it alone and gone home to bed.

The enemy didn't want to be there, it was obvious from the way they advanced; crab-fas.h.i.+on, their halberds and glaives thrust out well in front, sheer terror on their faces. Urging them on were a couple of officers, beside themselves with fury, like apple-growers whose trees are being robbed by the village children, but not quite furious enough to lead from the front. The job was about half-done; Sildocai called the first and second troops to follow him, and kicked up his favourite slow canter - quick enough to have momentum but slow enough to maintain control. There wasn't a line - the enemy were slouching towards him in a huddled bunch, the men on the ends trying to snuggle towards the centre - so he waved the second troop out wide left, and took the first troop wide right. The plan was to hit them hard in flank, turn them back on the camp in a confused mob so they'd get under the feet of any further, better-organised relief party. There was just about enough light from the camp-fires to see what he was about. It should have worked fine. It did - - Except that, as he bent down over his horse's neck to deliver a straightforward diagonal cut along the line of some footslogger's collar-bone, his saddle-girth snapped, sending him sliding helplessly down the vector of the stroke. He landed with his shoulder in the dead man's face, with his saddle still gripped between his thighs.

If it had happened to somebody else he'd probably have wet himself laughing as he rode to the rescue; but comedy is relative, and when he looked up, the first thing he saw was a man standing over him. He was wearing a s.h.i.+rt, a kettle-hat and nothing else, and he was just about to stick a halberd into Sildocai's chest.

There wasn't a lot he could do about it; the d.a.m.ned saddle stopped him moving his legs, so all he was able to do was throw up his left arm in the way of the halberd. He had a boiled leather vambrace on his forearm; the cutting edge of the blade slid across it like a skater on ice and came off at an angle, making contact with his face at the point of his cheekbone and slicing off the top of his ear. That left his hand in good position for grabbing hold of the halberd shaft; but what with the shock and all he m.u.f.fed it a bit, and the blade slit the web between his thumb and forefinger before he was able to tighten his grip and pull.

The manoeuvre was a qualified success; he got the halberd away from the man, but he pulled it down across his own face, cutting another line more or less parallel to the first, from the corner of his eye across the lower part of his scalp. He couldn't keep hold of the halberd, and dropped it. The man stared at him, then kicked him in the face - not a good idea for either party, since the man wasn't wearing anything on his feet. Sildocai was sure he felt one of the man's toes break at the same time he felt the bone go in his nose.

He had his right arm free by now, and he used it to grab the man's ankle and try to pull him down; but he m.u.f.fed that too and was left gripping a flailing leg, hardly able to see because of all the blood in his eyes. There didn't seem much point in holding on, so he let go, at which point the man suddenly threw his arms wide and fell on top of him.

He'd been hit hard, but not hard enough to kill him; at a guess, a scimitar-cut slantwise across the base of his neck under the rim of the kettle-hat. Now the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was lying right on top of him, their mouths almost touching, like lovers; the man's eyes were open wide and he was making some sort of stupid glugging noise; he was trying to say something, but Sildocai wasn't interested. 'Get off me!' he screeched, and jerked and pulled at his trapped left arm until he had it free. The fingers were stiff and tight (Permanent disability, Sildocai noted, worry about it later) but he had enough use of it to get a grip on the man's shoulder and push. He didn't want to go, but it turned out he didn't have much choice; he rolled on to his back without moving, except for more eye-rolling and gurgling. With a lot of effort Sildocai found a way to scrabble himself up on to his knees, but things weren't getting any better; a man running past him rammed him in the back, knocked him on his face and went sprawling down beside him. d.a.m.n, Sildocai thought, this is hopeless. The man was picking himself up; there was a sword lying beside him where he'd dropped it. But he left it there and skittered away, running very fast, which at the time seemed like a piece of luck.

Bad luck, as it turned out. The reason he'd bolted without even picking up his sword became horribly obvious as Sildocai lifted his head in time to see a horse's hooves rearing up over his head. He dropped down again, but that didn't help; he felt an unbearable pain in his back, felt something give way as the horse trod on him. He tried to shout, but his mouth was full of dirt and besides, all the air had been squeezed out of him. It took a lot of painful effort to put some back in its place.

Broken ribs, he diagnosed, with the part of his mind that somehow wasn't involved, this isn't getting any better. For two pins he'd have stayed where he was; but he could still recall a time when he'd been in charge of this situation, and one of the things he could remember about it was that as soon as the job was done, they were getting out of there and going home. Sildocai didn't want to be left behind, so it was very important to stand up, find his horse (or any d.a.m.ned horse) and get back to the fortress.

The man next to him was still making that ridiculous glugging noise, like a fractious baby. Sildocai rolled over on to his right shoulder, kicked with his legs and jack-knifed himself on to his feet; he staggered, nearly went over again, caught his balance just in time. The operation was unbelievably painful - I shouldn't have to be doing this, a man in my condition - and breathing had become a test of character. He took a step forward, but apparently someone had stolen the joints out of his knees while he'd been sprawling in the dirt. He managed to stay upright, but that was about the best he could do.

'Steady now, chum, it's all right.' Whoever he was, Sildocai hadn't seen or heard him coming; he was just there, a man to his left grabbing and holding on to his arm. 'It's all right,' he repeated. 'Let's get you out of this before you fall over.' It was a horrible sing-song voice - the Perimadeian accent had always grated on Sildocai. 'Come on, this way.'

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was trying to make him go back, towards the camp; that wasn't the right direction, so why was he doing it? Then it made sense. This was the enemy, mistaking him for a friend (like the man lying blubbering in the dirt, who'd expected him to help) - well, that was just fine, but it was the wrong direction. Fortunately, the man was an idiot; there was a knife hanging from his belt, just handy. Sildocai pulled it out and stuck it between his shoulders. For once, something went in the way it was meant to, but he'd missed the spot he'd been aiming for. The man gasped with pain and shock, but stayed on his feet. 'Oh G.o.ds,' the poor fool said and grabbed at Sildocai for support - he hadn't realised that Sildocai had stabbed him, must be thinking he'd been hit by an arrow or something. He took the man's weight on his shoulder as best he could, though it was nearly enough to bring him to his knees; then he pulled out the knife and stuck it in under the man's ear.

This time he did go down, but of course he was clinging on to Sildocai's shoulder, and so they hit the ground together. This one was easier to shove off - he was dead, which helped - but getting up again was probably going to be too hard for him to manage. Well, he'd tried; and, as his father used to say, if you've done your best, they can't ask any more of you.

Breathing was becoming harder, if anything. It was as if he had a big carpenter's clamp screwed across him, pressing his chest and back together while the carpenter waited for the glue to dry. But some people never learn (four generations of leaders). He dragged his elbows towards his knees, pushed his knees forward, tried to straighten his back - no future in that. Thanks for nothing, he thought bitterly, aiming his displeasure at the man he'd just killed. I'd have been just fine if you hadn't interfered. Then he straightened his legs and arms, probably the most gruelling physical effort he'd ever made in his life. It got him on his feet again. It was worth it.

Now then; all I've got to do now is find a horse, get on it . . . There didn't seem to be much in the way of battle-noises, he noticed with dismay. He had no idea how long it had been since he'd come off his horse. It felt like his whole life, of course, but that was subjective time. Quite possible, likely even, that his men had done as they were told and pushed off as soon as the job was done. In which case he needn't have nearly killed himself getting up.

He took three steps forward - a technique of controlled falling, whereby he aimed himself at the ground and stuck out a leg at the last moment. His left hand was hurting almost as much as his back - a different sort of pain, throbbing instead of sharp. Dragging in breath was getting to be more trouble than it was worth.

And then he saw the horse. Amazing creatures; in the middle of a battle, with all that death and pain around it, a riderless horse will still stop, put its head down and nibble at the gra.s.s. Sildocai looked at it for ten seconds, a long time in that context. He was trying to work out, from first principles, how to walk over to where the horse was standing, get on its back and make it go where he wanted it to. He knew the project was possible - we can win this, as Temrai would say - but at that particular moment he couldn't quite see how to go about it.

Sheer hard work and application, in the end. Luckily, the horse had the grace to hold still until he reached it, and then at least he had something to lean against while he bent down and lifted his foot up to the stirrup with his now mostly useless left hand. Getting into the saddle was always going to be the hardest part. No grip in his left hand, so pulling on the saddle was out. The best he could do was try to force his left leg straight and hope momentum and body weight would do the rest. It nearly worked; but while he was standing with one foot in one stirrup the horse decided to move, and it took him a long time to find the strength to get his leg over the horse's back and down the other side. When he'd accomplished that, he found that he had nothing left; he slumped forward against the horse's neck, his nose buried in its mane, and tried for one last breath. The horse kept walking; and since it was just a horse, and the enemy were too busy to bother with stray livestock, it carried on walking in the direction it remembered home used to be, until it came to a river. There it stopped to drink; and after that, it wandered a short way, snuffling for gra.s.s, until dawn; at which point someone on the other side of the river noticed it and started making a fuss. They swung out the bridge and sent some men to catch it; the horse didn't mind that, and they led it over the bridge and took the load off its back.

'It's Sildocai,' someone said.