Part 38 (1/2)

True horror struck them then. Where were Indara's Water-bearers?

Those Fanim who tried to run were cut down by their own officers. The unholy chorus grew louder. The forward cadres halted some fifty lengths from the ramparts. The odd panicked arrow winked into smoke against their Wards. Columns of foot soldiers streamed forward between the cadres. To the rear of the formations, out of bowshot, several solitary figures stepped into air, their crimson gowns flapping, their eyes and mouths s.h.i.+ning bright.

There was a collective intake of breath along the battlements ...

Then glittering light.

The great siege-tower Proyas's men called Tippytoes groaned and creaked as the oxen and slaves pressed it forward across the fields. As the construction neared completion the previous dusk, Ingiaban had wondered aloud whether the siege-tower-which had been constructed to breach Gerotha's walls-would be tall enough ”to give s.h.i.+meh's towers a kiss.” With typical wit Gaidekki had replied that ”she need only stand on her tippytoes.” Somehow the name had stuck.

The great structure dipped and righted itself. Standing upon its packed crown, Proyas tightened an already white-knuckled grip on the railing. Men shouted, both about him and throughout the floors below. The crack of whips rose from behind. Before him, he could see the siege-tower's path marked in the raw dirt the sappers had used to level the irrigation ditches runnelling the fields. At the track's end, the white-and-ochre walls of s.h.i.+meh waited, their heights bristling with heathen men and heathen spears.

To his left, Tippytoes' counterpart, which the men had come to call Sister, lumbered forward as well, matching their progress. Taller than most any tree, she had been sheathed in mats of sodden seaweed, so that she seemed something otherworldly, a limbless beast. Hatches had been propped open along each of her six floors, behind which, Proyas knew, dozens of ballistae stood c.o.c.ked and waiting, prepared to rake the parapets of the Tatokar Walls as soon as they entered range. The carpenter-overseers who had directed the a.s.sembly of both towers swore they were miracles of engineering-as they should be, given that the Warrior-Prophet had designed them.

Tippytoes teetered and advanced, her axles and joints screaming. The white-tiled walls and their giant eyes loomed closer ...

Please G.o.d, Proyas found himself praying, Proyas found himself praying, let this one thing be! let this one thing be!

The first of the stones arced toward them, flung by great engines hidden in the city. They fell wide, thumping into the earth short of their positions, but there was something surreal about watching them, as though the soul refused to believe weights so great could be cast so high. Men hollered in warning. A missile whooshed over them-close enough to touch! It missed, but crashed with deadly effect into the long train that drove them forward. Tippytoes lurched still for a moment, long enough for Sister to pull ahead. Proyas could see her runged backside, which was naught but a giant ladder. Then Tippytoes heaved forward again.

Count-Palatine Gaidekki suddenly appeared among the men crowding the rear of Sister's top platform, his dark face beaming.

”Glory goes to the fleet of foot!” he cried. ”We'll wash up the blood so you don't slip when you arrive!”

Though teeth remained clenched, all laughed, and a number began shouting for more speed. The laughter redoubled when a near hit forced Gaidekki and his men to fairly dive.

Then the first of the lights flashed about Ma.s.sus Gate, and all heads turned. It seemed they could hear screams ...

Even if sorcery was no longer anathema, few men among the pious-especially among the Conriyans-wished to follow the Scarlet Spires anywhere, let alone to Holy s.h.i.+meh. Proyas watched numb as great gouts of flame washed across the barbicans ...

There was a chorus of plank-m.u.f.fled shouts from directly beneath him, followed by a staccato snap, as though someone had broken a dozen twigs over his knee. Iron-tipped bolts whirred out from the ballistae arrayed behind the hatches below him, fanned across the teeming parapets. Moments later, Sister responded in kind. Save for those that exploded in small ceramic showers against the wall, the missiles seemed to vanish into the defenders crowding the battlements.

”s.h.i.+elds!” Proyas cried, not because they would help against the heathen artillery, but because they had come within extreme bow range.

Something dimmed the morning sun ... Clouds?

The first hail of arrows fell upon them and those heaving them forward.

”Fire!” Proyas cried to the archers about him. ”Clear the walls!”

The Ma.s.sus Gate had become a mad play of lights in his periphery. But there was no time to watch. With every heartbeat, the unblinking eyes of s.h.i.+meh's walls drew closer and the air grew thicker with missiles. When he dared lower his s.h.i.+eld, he could discern individual heathen in the bristling ma.s.s of defenders. He glimpsed one old man, a kettle bound to his head, taken in the throat by a bolt and carried backward into the city. Flaming pots crashed about the towers. Two smashed into the side of Sister, flinging burning tar across the seaweed. Suddenly smoke wreathed every sight, and the roar of fire bloated every sound. There was a crack and a concussion that brought all of them to their knees. One of the mighty stones had found its target. But miraculously, Tippytoes groaned onward. The floor beneath Proyas heaved like the deck of a s.h.i.+p. He hunched under his s.h.i.+eld. The archers about him nocked, stood, fired, then crouched to nock once again. Every second man, it seemed, fell backward, swatting at a jutting shaft. The knights dragged them, dropped them over the side to make room for the others surging up from the lower floors. There was a roar, then a t.i.tanic clacking of stones that could only come from the Ma.s.sus Gate. But a chorus of shrieks drew his attention to his left, to Sister, where a pot had exploded across the upper deck. Burning knights dove, heedless of the height, crashed onto their comrades below.

”Gaidekki!” Proyas screamed across the interval. ”Gaidekki!” ”Gaidekki!”

The Count-Palatine's scowling face appeared between the timber h.o.a.rdings, and Proyas actually smiled, despite the arrows buzzing between them. Then Gaidekki was gone. Proyas slipped to his knees, blinking against the image of the man's neck and shoulders snapping about an unstoppable stone.

The sky blackened. Closer and closer the siege-towers lumbered, though Sister had become a s.h.i.+ning inferno. Then there were the white-tiled walls, close enough to hit with thrown clothing, crammed with arms and howling faces. Proyas could see a great eye opening across the white-tiled planes below, glimpse the wide expanse of street and structure reaching out to the Sacred Heights. There! There! There was the First Temple!

s.h.i.+meh! he thought. he thought. s.h.i.+meh! s.h.i.+meh!

Proyas lowered his silver war-mask, glimpsed his stooped kinsmen doing the same. The flying bridge dropped, its iron hooks biting the battlements. Tippytoes was tall enough to kiss after all.

Crying out to Prophet and G.o.d, the Crown Prince leapt into the swords of his enemy ...

The tree could not be missed.

It stood at the edge of a greater hill near the heart of the debris fields, the twin of black Umiaki in girth and height. Its great tendons were stripped of their bark, and its limbs reached into the air like winding tusks.

Climbing the remnants of a monumental stair set into the hillside, Kellhus soon found himself beneath its ma.s.sive sinews. Beyond the tree, upturned blocks and rows of headless pillars stretched across the levelled summit. Save in the direction of s.h.i.+meh, where the ground had given way altogether, paving stones encircled the tree's base, rising and cracking about the immense roots.

He placed a hand against the immovable trunk, ran his fingertips across the lines that scored its surface. The spoor of old worms. He paused where the ground sheered away, staring at the black clouds that had acc.u.mulated on the horizon-above s.h.i.+meh. It seemed he could hear the thrum of distant thunder. Then he lowered himself over the fall, using exposed roots to anchor his descent.

Sheets of gravel clattered across the slopes below.

He found his footing. Above him, the tree soared, its trunk smooth and phallic, its boughs curved like canines, reaching far into the airy heights. Before him, roots twined like cuttlefish limbs. At some point-many years ago, from the look of the hatchet work-an opening had been hacked through them. Peering into the excavated gloom, Kellhus saw the lines of stonework, stairs dropping into blackness ...

He pressed his way forward, descended into the belly of the hillside.

Holding out his hand to alert Serwe and her brother, Cnaiur reined his stolen horse to a hard stop. Four vultures took soundlessly to the sky. On the slopes of a neighbouring rise, five saddled but riderless horses momentarily raised their heads, then continued grazing.

The three of them had paused on a low rise overlooking the carnage. The Betmulla Mountains rose grey and hunched in the distances before them-and there was still no sign of Kyudea, though Serwe insisted they followed the Dunyain's path exactly. She could smell him, she said.

Cnaiur dismounted, strode into the midst of the sprawled bodies. He hadn't slept for days, but the exhaustion that buzzed through his limbs seemed an abstract thing, as easily ignored as a philosopher's argument. Ever since his discussion with the Mandate sorcerer, a strange intensity had seized him-a vigour he could only identify with hate.

”He goes to Kyudea,” the fat fool had finally said. the fat fool had finally said.

”Kyudea?”

”Yes, s.h.i.+meh's ruined sister. It lies to the southwest, near the headwaters of the Jes.h.i.+mal.”

”Did he tell you why?”

”No one knows ... Most think he goes to speak with the G.o.d.”

”Why do they think that?”

”Because he said he goes to his father's house.”