Darksoul

They stood at the base of the wall with Major Renik, wincing at every scream. They’d held it through the night with Vaunt, and now Yarrow and Edris had the command. Supposedly, the night watch could stand down until dusk.

‘I should just—’ Durdil started as the clash of arms grew suddenly louder.

Hallos and Renik both put hands on his shoulders. ‘Not a chance, Commander,’ Hallos rasped. ‘Eat, bathe, sleep. Physician’s orders.’

He nodded and moved north, towards Second Tower and the distant Last Bastion, where Merle and his masons were arriving ready to prop the wall. They’d tried everything they could to force the trebuchets off the wall, to no avail. Now that there was only one loosing at the weak spot, Durdil and Merle had decided to risk the repairs.

There weren’t any bodies down here, but whoever had taken them away had left the bloodstains behind. Men thrown to their deaths from the wallwalk above. Men who’d fallen accidentally. Men who’d been wounded or skewered through and then vanished over the guard wall into the depths below.

He scuffed a rusty stain and eyed Merle’s huge outline; the mason had taken to lurking at the wall almost constantly, as though his presence alone could prevent a collapse.

‘Losses?’ Durdil asked Renik, and sipped at the cup a soldier had given him as he’d finally exited the gatehouse. Watered wine. Nectar.

‘Four hundred in the night, as of an hour ago. We estimate the enemy lost at least three times that, but they show no signs of slowing. Something’s stirred them up and they’ve got the numbers to rotate in so that there’s no let-up for us.’

‘Right, and what are we running out of?’ Merle had a lot of masons with him today; the sight of the big men wound his nerves a notch or two tighter.

‘Arrows. Bandages. Opium. Stones for the catapults, bolts for the stingers. Men. Hope.’

‘All right, Renik, that’s enough, go and get some sleep.’ Durdil held his eyes, no need to say anything. Renik blushed and then saluted, staggered away towards the slaughter district and its gate into Second Circle. The north barracks was just inside and Renik could be in a cot and asleep within five minutes. Durdil envied him.

‘Merle, my good man, give me good news,’ Durdil said, forcing cheer into his voice. Please, gods, give me good news.

Merle looked like he’d been asked to tell lies in front of the temple godpool. ‘Well, we’re ready to go when you are, Commander. Have been for a week now. Stone’s here, chisels and men are here, mortar’s ready to be mixed. Just that trebuchet that’s the worry now. Any chance?’

I can’t stop that trebuchet loosing for an hour, let alone the time you need, and if you think I can then you’re madder than a stoat down a fat man’s trousers.

‘Out of interest, if you completed the repairs while the treb kept loosing, what would happen?’ Durdil asked.

Merle’s dusty eyebrows rose high. ‘Depends how far the bad stone stretches. If we have to chip deep into the wall, then it’ll be so weak she won’t withstand more than a few hours’ bombardment. Half a day at the most. And that’s with only the one engine loosing at it instead of all three.’

‘That bad? All right, and we need to make the repairs soon, do we?’

Merle folded his massive arms. ‘You’re already gambling more than you’ve got to bet with, Commander. Them moving the two other trebs definitely bought us time, but that’s gone now. If we don’t make these repairs today there’s no point in us making them.’

Durdil puffed out his cheeks and flapped his hands around. ‘How about if we prop the wall on the inside and do the works like that?’

Merle coughed a laugh. ‘Prop the wall? Sir, it’s three times the height of a man. Prop it with what?’

‘Masts from the boats in the harbour,’ Hallos said when neither of them seemed to have an answer.

Merle frowned up at the wall looming over them. ‘It’s a possibility, Commander, but I wouldn’t want to stake my reputation on them holding.’

Just your life then. And all of ours too.

‘All right, we’re out of options,’ Durdil said heavily. ‘The fact is we can’t reach that siege engine and stop it. I’ll send five Hundreds to the harbour to protect the dockworkers unstepping the masts. Start work chipping out the stone now and prop it when they arrive. The treb will loose until nightfall, so pray the masts hold it up until then. Get the new stone in as soon as you can, before dark if possible. If you can, work through the night and with luck and the Dancer’s grace, the mortar will have dried by dawn.’

Merle scratched his scalp. ‘You’re putting a lot of faith in those masts, Commander, and in the drying properties of good mortar. It’s my lads who’ll be inside the wall if she comes down.’

‘And it’s my lads who’ll be on the top of it, fighting and dying all day and all night, too. We’re under siege, Merle; every single one of us is risking death now. Can you do it?’

Merle stared at the faces of his masons and their apprentices, at the mounds of dressed stone, the tubs of sand and limestone waiting to be mixed. Then he clapped his huge hands once. ‘Work’ll go slower in the dark, sir, so we’ll need plenty of torchlight to see by, and if you’ve got men up there fighting, well’ – he pointed to a bloodstain – ‘not sure my lads want to be killed by a hundredweight of soldier and armour dropping on their heads. Still, we’ll give it our best and leave the rest up to the Dancer.’

Durdil stepped forward and looked up into Merle’s honest, dusty face. ‘I don’t think we can leave this one to the gods, Merle. If you don’t manage this, we all die.’

Merle’s chest inflated so much he nearly pushed Durdil back a step. ‘Aye, Commander. We understand. We won’t let you down, will we, boys?’ There was a chorus of grim affirmation and the masons turned away from Durdil, stepped up the wall and the indecipherable markings scratched in chalk and, without another word, began to chisel.

‘You’re a credit to your trade and to Rilpor. I have no doubts you’ll succeed. Anything you need today, Colonel Yarrow up above will see you get it. Once night falls, come to me.’

Merle bobbed his head, and Durdil nodded again and headed for Last Bastion and the North Gate. The harbour nestled behind the stump wall had been probed but not assaulted; the boats remained intact, their masts the only thing between Rilporin and defeat.

Durdil had been asleep for approximately three and a half seconds when someone burst into his room and yelled him awake.

‘What?’ he grunted, knuckling grit from his eyes and letting out a long, protracted groan as his muscles sparked into rebellious, agonised life.

‘I said, they’ve built a sow and it’s heading for the gatehouse. Looks like they’re going to try rope and tackle to bring down the portcullis. If they manage it, they’ll slap pitch against the gates at this end of the tunnel and set the whole thing on fire.’ Vaunt’s voice was calm as ice, but there were hectic spots of colour in his cheeks.

‘The room above the tunnel’s manned, correct? They’re opening the murder holes?’ Durdil asked as he staggered upright and squinted as Vaunt flung open the shutters. He looked out – mid-afternoon, apparently. Still not enough sleep.

Durdil shrugged into chainmail and jammed a helmet on, ignoring Vaunt’s protest that he should be in plate armour. ‘No time,’ he snapped, buckling on his sword and snatching up vambraces and gauntlets.

He strode to the door and out into an eerie, silent Second Circle and then jogged heavily towards the gate into First Circle. Vaunt caught him up, slung him a waterskin and then a heel of bread with butter spread as thick as his little finger was round. Durdil’s eyelids sagged and he groaned at the taste, mumbled thanks as Vaunt reclaimed the waterskin and replaced it with a thick pink wedge of what turned out to be lamb.

Gods, food. His stomach reminded him that as welcome as the meal was, it was nowhere near enough and that he’d forgotten to eat before tumbling into his cot – and that, actually, there were a few more points his body would like to raise now that he was awake, such as the unexpected rigours of battle, the bone-deep bruises from swords and axes trying to hammer through his armour, the general lack of food, water, sleep and a spare minute to take a godsdamned piss, if you please.

Durdil bit down on the meat, turned to face the closest wall, hefted his chainmail and let loose a stream of golden urine that glinted magnificently in the sun. He groaned again.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Vaunt asked worriedly. ‘Blood in your piss, sir? I can get Hallos and—’

Durdil grunted around the chunk of meat in his mouth and then shook his head, finished up and stuffed himself back in his trousers, remembering to wipe his hand on his sleeve before taking the meat out of his mouth.

‘I’m fine, let’s go,’ he said and forced himself into a run again, pounding through the killing field beneath the curtain wall, where an enemy would be trapped between the walls and so vulnerable to arrow shot from above – gods, don’t let it come to that – on towards the gatehouse on legs that really shouldn’t shake this much and in through the door and up and up and up the stairs to the level of the wallwalk, where Edris and Yarrow had the command.

And Renik, too, apparently, though the man was supposed to be sleeping. I’m supposed to be sleeping. So’s Vaunt.

‘Show me.’

Renik gestured to an arrow slit and Durdil pressed his face to the stone and looked down, still chewing the fatty lamb and trying not to drool. The sow was an upturned cart with plates of metal and animal hides nailed to its bottom, the legs of a dozen men visible underneath as they carried it as protection above their heads and made their way towards the gate.

He could see the ropes unfurling behind them and knew they’d be attached to grappling hooks that they’d latch on to the portcullis. As soon as they’d hooked on, the squad on the other end of the rope would start cranking, hoping to pull the portcullis free of its housing before the defenders could sprint the length of the tunnel and unhook them.

Standard manoeuvre, one we know how to counter … Durdil’s eyes tracked the long ropes trailing from behind the sow. Looked as though they stretched back to the trebuchet, now facing away from the city as though it was going to hurl rocks into its own army.

‘Fuck the gods,’ Durdil breathed and grabbed Renik by the shoulder, pulled him to the arrow slit. ‘What happens if they connect the ropes from the portcullis to the treb’s throwing arm?’ he hissed. ‘Could it work?’

Renik paled and swallowed. ‘Dangerous,’ he said. ‘Either it flips the treb, shatters it, snaps the ropes or rips free the portcullis. Three of those will be lethal to the men around it. The fourth could well be lethal for Rilporin.’

Durdil spun from the window and shoved Vaunt towards the stairs. ‘Get those fucking hooks off the portcullis right fucking now.’