Will Elliott: The Pilgrims

The huge Tormentor — he recognised it as such at once — strode past the gate. It slowly reached high up the wall and plucked an archer off the shelves up there, while others could be seen leaping to their deaths to avoid its touch. As they watched, it carefully impaled the squirming man it had grabbed on the spike of its left shoulder as though it were placing an ornament on itself. Anfen was sickened to see, in the braziers’ light, writhing shapes of other men still alive but similarly impaled on the many long spikes all down the beast’s body. Spears and arrows were fired at it from the ground and from the high wall, but it was hard to tell if anything had stuck into it. The beast thumped huge hands against the gate, making it shudder and boom, then ambled away with lurching steps till it was hidden from their view by buildings.

Gazing further across the city, Anfen saw one, two other huge shapes moving about, their outlines lit by fires which had begun to spread through the streets. Horns began to blare as the city wakened from sleep into a nightmare. Anfen was partly awestruck by what he’d seen. ‘Valour help us,’ he whispered, not even realising he’d said this prayer; having brought such shame to himself with sword in hand and cries to the Spirit on his lips, he’d sworn never to speak Valour’s name again.

Siel pulled him from the window, otherwise he might have watched on until it all played out to its end, helpless to look away. ‘We must go,’ she said.

Anfen came back to himself with a start. ‘We’re not going with the Mayors. You and the others. Get horses and follow me. We have a new mission.’

He grabbed his things then rushed through the luxury inn with its marble walls, trickling fountains and scented air. Many guests waited in confusion in the lobby, self-important foreign officials among them. He saw one such in the colours of Yinfel, having a heated argument with a girl doing the luggage boy’s job, since he’d likely been called away to the gate and handed a bow and arrow to defend the city. Anfen ran over and grabbed the bloated, red-faced man, who reeled back, startled and angered. ‘Listen close,’ said Anfen. ‘A message for your Mayor, Izven. The discussed cargo to be delivered now , directly five miles west of the end of the great dividing road. Not a footstep beyond. Your Mayor alone to hear these words and hear them soon, or I will hunt you down. The message comes from Anfen of the Mayors’ Command.’

He ran outside to the high shelf and forced himself not to look down at the chaos. The first light of day began to turn the sky white. Men with pikes were erecting a barricade at the top of the long ramp down to the city, to keep the Tormentors and refugees away from the city’s tall shelf and its precious tunnels out, so the officials could more easily escape. A last group of people escaping the carnage were allowed to flee past before the pikes and spears went up. Those trapped on the ramp wailed and screamed; some passed young children over. The guards took the children and tossed weapons back over the barricade for the rest to defend themselves and defend the ramp.

Anfen ran for the stables, not caring whose horse he was about to steal — the tired scrawny things that had brought them here wouldn’t suffice. Siel and Sharfy spotted him and followed, against the heavy flow of people rushing for the secret exits through the caves. Neither of them spoke as Anfen shoved past the protesting stable hands and got up on the finest steed he could find. ‘Get yourselves horses,’ he ordered.

But Siel had an arrow drawn and a tear sliding down her cheek. At present, the bow pointed at the ground. Anfen looked at her, amazed. ‘What is this? Look outside. Tell me what you see.’

‘We serve the Mayors’ Command,’ said Siel, ‘not you. Wait for their permission. Whatever happened in the night has surely changed their view of things.’

‘There’s no time left for their blather. Put your arrow away.’

Siel’s arrow rose to point at his chest. He tried to gauge from the look in her eye whether or not she’d shoot him if he rode past her. Probably. So be it. It would count as an honourable death. He flicked the horse’s reins.

The stable hands had run back towards the inn to spread word of trouble. Now, a few guards approached along the city’s high, curved shelf with weapons drawn.

Sharfy looked from Siel to Anfen to the approaching guards, and he drew the sword he’d bought yesterday from smiths in the Bazaar. It now flashed sideways, knocking Siel’s bow off target. The arrow loosed and skidded across the ground. He wrenched the bow from her hands and hurled it into a pile of hay. Soon he too found a quality mount already saddled and climbed up. ‘Be safe,’ Anfen told Siel, who stood helplessly watching them with tears streaking down her face.

His horse galloped out onto the shelf, rearing as it passed the guards, Sharfy following. They headed against the flow of people for the long ramps down, and found one whose barricade was not yet in place. They began steering through a panicking mass of citizens fleeing for the southern gate. From Elvury, the Wall at World’s End would be a week’s hurried ride through far safer country than the Aligned north, if they rode like the wind straight down the great dividing road and changed horses at every chance. Which was what Anfen intended.

He hoped that as he rode a way to destroy the Wall would occur to him, for he still had no idea how it could be done.

When Loup heard what had happened, he found a steed of his own and headed after them.

‘A city,’ said the war mage, bowing again as though it were his butler, and pointing a hooked claw at something off in the distance. Though Eric could not see Elvury, he could see smoke pouring into a faintly brightening white sky, empty of magic. He assumed the lack of magic was why the war mage had set him down here, on the ledge of a small cave above the mouth of a mountain pass.

The war mage waited for instructions, cat-yellow eyes studying him carefully. He had no thought for it at all, for below in broad columns soldiers poured from the fields and into the narrow pass with shields held over their heads, boots stomping the ground like a drumbeat. Only after the last row of men had made their way into the tunnel did anything happen: an explosive noise sounded at the entrance, echoing off the sheer cliff faces. A huge column of stone fell out of a groove in the cliff’s wall and slammed across the road, making a quick escape back through the pass impossible.

At intervals along the road, smaller columns were by invisible means blown free from the walls with sounds like huge whips cracking to thud down across the path. The invaders scrambled in panic to avoid being crushed, which most of them managed to do. The fallen pillars made their passage slow — made a charge at the city’s gate at the other end of the mile-long pass nearly impossible. Once retreat was cut off, a hail of arrows and stones began to rain down. The shields held overhead made it look as if insects with shells crawled sluggishly along, and sent arrows glancing to the ground with the odd flash of sparks lighting up the pass.

Weighted rope ladders flew up over the roadblocks near the gates, and men scrambled over. Far fewer missiles rained down on them than should have, for many of the pass’s defenders had fled their perches and run back to see why horns blared in the city. Two-thirds of the invading force survived their passage through that hellish stretch, to regroup in the space beside the huge gate, safe from attack. None of the rank and file yet knew what awaited them behind the city walls, only that something unnamed would leave Elvury’s defences weak by the time they got inside, that their mission was to finish the city off then enjoy a day’s plunder before the castle overseers arrived to catalogue the takings.