Darksoul

‘General Skerris approaches,’ Galtas said instead of voicing any of the thoughts hurtling around his brain.

The fat general of the East Rank wobbled to attention and saluted. ‘Prince Rivil, Lord Galtas,’ Skerris wheezed, ‘we’re about ready for another push, if you’d like to give the order? The Mireces are readying their new tower after the … mishap with the first. Trebuchets will keep up the bombardment until the troops are within range, then cease fire to avoid casualties. Our target is Second Last—’ he pointed a fat finger at Second Tower and Last Bastion, the section of wall to their left of the gatehouse. ‘The Mireces will assault Double First.’ He indicated First Bastion and First Tower to their right.

Skerris’s words conjured a vivid image of the Mireces’ first siege tower bright with flame as the defenders’ fire arrows lodged in the unprotected wood. It’d burnt fast and hard, killing several of the Raiders inside it. A fucking shambles.

‘Defenders’ll have to split their forces again. If we can establish a decent bridgehead this time …’ Skerris trailed off as Rivil’s scowl returned.

‘How many men have we lost so far?’ he snapped.

‘Some hundreds, Sire.’

‘It’s too slow, Skerris. All of this is too slow. We might have destroyed the West and North Ranks, but that incompetence at the harbour two weeks ago allowed fucking thousands of South Rankers into the city to reinforce the defenders. What if they’ve sent for the rest?’

‘Sire, we are doing all that we can. Progress is steady. Yesterday we held a bridgehead for the better part of three hours,’ Skerris added.

‘What do you want, a fucking medal?’ Rivil shouted. ‘We’re running out of artillery for the trebs and a bridgehead is not a bridgehead unless it accomplishes something other than the deaths of our men.’

‘Standard divide and conquer, Sire, and the same tactics will apply if the remainder of the South Rank does come. It may not look like it, but we’re doing well. We’re winning.’

It was probably the worst thing Skerris could have said. Rivil’s face purpled and saliva flew. ‘Winning? Does this look like fucking winning to you, fat man? We’re living in tents and shitting in fields while they live off the provisions of an entire city. They have months of supplies in there, hospitals, armouries, inns and cooks and clean clothes …’

Rivil stopped talking, and neither Galtas nor Skerris moved to fill the silence. Rivil’s temper had been shortening by the hour this last week. He faced the city again just as the lead trebuchet unloaded its stone at the wall. The ground in front was littered with spent boulders and giant slabs of rock that had been cracked off the outer face, all of which further hindered the ladder teams and siege towers.

‘Skerris, send the men, ours and the Mireces. Full assault. Galtas, you’re going with them.’

Galtas sputtered a laugh. Go into the city? As part of a ladder assault? ‘Sire, I’m not Rank-trained. I’ll be too slow up the ladder. I could better serve—’

‘The gods will watch over you,’ Rivil interrupted. ‘So you need not be afraid. If the Mireces have the balls for it, I’m sure you do too. I want you in Rilporin and I want definitive proof that my father is dead. These bastards are too motivated for my liking; the king clinging to life might be enough for them. Then I want you to do something to get us in, either frontal assault or a quiet infiltration. Either will suit.’

‘Do something?’ Galtas echoed. ‘Such as?’

Rivil snarled at him: ‘Improvise.’

Galtas’s face was wooden, unresponsive, but he managed a bow and plastered an insincere smile across his mouth. ‘As you command, Sire,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’ll see to the orders immediately. General, shall we?’

He stalked across the field towards the half of the Third Thousand whose turn it was to die today, his ears straining behind him for Rivil’s voice telling him he was joking. It didn’t come. Galtas would be running up the inside of a siege tower and out across a gangplank on to the wall while archers loosed shaft after shaft at him, or he’d be scaling a ladder along with the Rankers, up into enemy territory with arrows, rocks and boiling oil being poured down on his head, to roll on to the allure and face a thousand defenders.

Galtas was going to die.

‘His Highness is getting a little fractious, eh, milord?’ Skerris said as they marched towards the assault teams. On his right, Galtas could see a swarming mass of blue-clad Mireces readying themselves, their second siege tower, this one covered in fire-proof animal skins, already rumbling towards the wall.

‘Fractious?’ Galtas said, and then bit down on his response and chose other, less volatile, words. ‘He chafes at the delay. He is of course too valuable to risk at the wall, and so there is little he can do until we have forced an entry. He wishes to fight alongside his men, to lead them in battle.’

Galtas suspected Rivil wanted no such bloody thing, but he couldn’t exactly put forward his theory that Rivil just wanted the big chair and the shiny crown and someone else to do all the actual governing for him.

‘If it is the Lady’s will, he will get that chance,’ Skerris rumbled. ‘As for you, what’s your preference? Tower or ladder?’

‘I suppose a quiet way in through a gate is out of the question?’ Galtas quipped and Skerris laughed, slapped him on the back and knocked him off balance. ‘I would value your opinion on this one. Which is more likely to get me killed? And of course, there’s the matter of my disguise for once I’m in the city.’

‘Disguise?’

Galtas tapped his arm, the blue of his shirt visible between the half-sleeve of his mail and the thick leather vambrace. ‘Not sure I’ll get access to the king’s quarters or anywhere else dressed like this.’

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘I’ll need the shirt off one of your corpses,’ Galtas said. ‘Clean, preferably.’

Skerris nodded slowly. ‘I understand. As for the way in, if you’re quick and the gods love you, the ladder’s your friend.’

I suspect the ladder’s my death, Galtas thought sourly. Still. The Lady’s will.

THE BLESSED ONE (#u12feb8fa-f5b7-5219-8f6f-cb6a72bd368b)

Fourth moon, morning, day twenty-two of the siege

Mireces encampment, outside Rilporin, Wheat Lands

There was a crackle to the air, and the fine hairs on the nape of Lanta’s neck and along her forearms stood erect. The gods were so close now, ever-present, like the scent of a lover on skin. She didn’t need to be in a sacred space to hear Them now; Their voices were everywhere and Their commands were simple: take the city, slaughter the inhabitants, burn the temples. Kill or convert, but leave no one alive who held the Dancer and the Fox God in their hearts.

Commands that filled Lanta with joy and holy fire. There would be thousands for sacrifice once the city fell, thousands whose blood would wet earth dedicated to the Dark Lady and Gosfath, God of Blood.

‘Your will, Red Ones. All this to your glory, all this in your names. Rilporin will fall and your children will rise in its place. Gilgoras will be yours.’ Lanta knelt in the grass of a spring morning, surrounded by the stink of thousands of warriors waiting their turn to fight and die.

No cave-temple rock walls lit with fire watched her prayers, no cold stone dug into her knees, witness to her ritual pain. Lanta knelt in the light of the world and the gods were there with her, in a country from which They’d been forced a millennium before. A shiver ran across her skin. They were under the same sun as her, no longer separated by an impenetrable veil but merely its tattered remnants. Gilgoras trembled beneath Their presence and Their vengeance would be terrible and beautiful in its glory.

She waited, but the Dark Lady did not summon her. Lanta’s disappointment was keen but she could understand the gods’ delight in being back in Gilgoras, free to roam Rilpor, Listre and Krike and visit those pockets of true believers that Lanta was convinced must still exist. The gods would speak when They needed to. They came when They chose, not when Lanta wished it. A lesson hard learned many years before. Until then, the children of the Dark Path knew what they had to do.

The Blessed One finished praying and eased herself to her feet, the sun warm on her scalp and the breeze gentle across her cheek. The gods may not have spoken, but still They hovered close, Their bloody wings outstretched across the army, shrouding it in divine right. Victory was promised, and Lanta would pay any price to ensure it was so. Pay it gladly, gleefully, secure in her righteousness.

She gazed at the city, and then around the vast expanse of the Wheat Lands. They called this place the bread basket of Rilpor, and this year those crops that hadn’t been trampled into the mud would feed Mireces bellies. More wheat than she’d ever seen. More crops, more grass, more flat farming land than Lanta had believed existed stretched around them and the city nestled in the embrace of Rilpor’s mighty rivers. All theirs soon enough.

‘As the gods will.’ Lanta sighed and looked back at the city again, grey walls looming over the plain like a storm front, scarred and battered and still imperious, intact and mocking their efforts. She brushed grass and flakes of dirt from her skirt. Of all she had expected of the holy war, the possibility that the siege would be boring hadn’t occurred to her. But the days had stretched, one into another, with no significant gains and more than a few losses.

Lanta’s thoughts strayed to Eagle Height and the women and children waiting in the snow and rock of the mountains. The snowmelt would be flooding down the narrow channels carved into the rock now, taking the unwary, driving carcasses, branches and stones before it, leaving the land behind cleansed. The slaves would be planting their own poor crops now, carrots and turnips in the hard ground, coaxing them to life with goat manure and prayers. Pask would sacrifice a man for their victory, and a woman that the crops would not fail, that there would be no late storms.

Eagle Height – home. She sighed, staring around the camp filled with the chatter of Mireces. It would be good to summon the women, children and priests after they had secured victory, to send them into the towns and villages like a sacred flood, driving all before them who would not live beneath their rule. Rilpor would become Mireces, and Rilporians would become their slaves. Once the city fell and the Flower-Whore and Her bastard Trickster son were dead, there was nothing they could not do.

Once the city fell. Lanta’s smile was grim. So much work still to do, even once all Rilpor was theirs.

‘What did you learn?’

The words startled her and Lanta returned to her surroundings. She faced Gilda and sneered. ‘Many things,’ she said, ‘things you would not understand, lost in your petty delusion that life is anything other than brutal and full of pain. You fail to see how, in accepting those things to honour our gods, that we become stronger.’

Gilda folded her hands over her stomach and gazed into the sky for a while. ‘You’re right,’ she said eventually, her eyes twinkling as they met Lanta’s, ‘there’s little I understand about your religion, about why you would choose a life of fear and an eternity of pain over a world of life and light and beauty and an afterlife of joy and oneness. Because life is hard, aye, but it isn’t brutal. Brutal’s what we do to each other. Hard is what the seasons do to us. But I meant, did you learn anything about the siege? Been going a while now, hasn’t it?’

‘I would not tell you if I did,’ Lanta snapped. ‘That is between the king, Rivil, myself and the gods.’

Gilda’s mouth quirked. ‘Oh,’ she said quietly, ‘you said “if I did”. So you didn’t, then. Learn anything. Gods not chatty today?’