David Chandler - Honor among thieves

A stroke of good luck, but good luck too late, Malden thought. He would have to stick to the plan he’d already made.

He signaled to the archers around him-Elody’s whores, women he’d known for years. They looked at him with trusting eyes. They were counting on him, he realized. Expecting a miracle. He truly hoped he had one left in stock. “Don’t waste shots on the berserkers, unless you think you can actually kill a few. They don’t feel pain or wounds. When they come through the-”

Down below he heard Morget’s voice. The barbarian shouted, “Pull, you weaklings! Pull or die!”

Under Malden’s feet, the very stones of the wall began to shake.

“Get back, get back from Ryewall,” he shouted, again and again. Soon he couldn’t even hear his own voice. The noise of the wall was just too loud.

It started as a low creaking, like an unoiled hinge being ripped from its nails. The noise grew to an unearthly moan, accompanied by the percussion of stones falling from a great height. As Malden watched in horror, the Ryewall began to shimmy, its ramparts swaying up and down as if made of water on a foaming sea.

“Pull!” Morget screamed again, and unlike Malden’s, his voice carried. “Again! Pull!”

Below and behind Malden, Slag tore the tarpaulin off his secret weapon.

“That’s it?” Malden demanded.

It didn’t look like much. Just a metal tube ten feet long and two across, dull yellow in color. Bands of steel were wrapped around its length like the hoops of a barrel. One end was open, and Balint stuffed handfuls of nails and broken weapons and old horseshoes down its mouth. Slag busied himself at a small charcoal fire a little ways off. It looked like he was just trying to get warm.

“This is what you’ve been working on? The thing that was going to turn them back?” Malden demanded. “It looks like a giant pestle. Do you need me to drive the barbarians into the world’s largest mortar?”

“Pull!” Morget roared.

And Ryewall fell.

Croy brought Ghostcutter around and disemboweled a gray-bearded reaver, then ducked as an axe whistled over his head. He lost his horse at some point-he barely remembered when-and had been wading through the melee ever since, cutting down any man who came before him. The clatter of glancing blows on his armor and helm drowned out the thoughts in his head. The strength in his good arm saw him through.

He laid about him left and right, barely looking at the men he killed. If they wore furs or had shaved heads, it was enough. Ghostcutter lifted and fell, swung out and took lives on the backswing. He dodged under blows that would have cut through his armor like rotten silk, rolled away whenever they knocked him to the ground and leapt back to his feet. Wounds didn’t matter. The fatigue of the long march south didn’t matter. Anger-if nothing else-could sustain him. Rage.

Cythera. Cythera, he kept thinking. Just her name. Her face swam before his eyes, that beloved face now distorted by betrayal. He had trusted her. He had trusted in her pledge, her faith, her constancy. Cythera, he thought as he stabbed a man in the kidneys. Her name formed on his lips and he slashed through the tendons of a barbarian’s neck. Cythera.

Malden. Malden, whom he had put in charge of Cythera’s protection. Malden, whom he had asked-pleaded with-to preserve her chastity. What had he been thinking? The man was a thief! Malden never saw anything that belonged to someone else, save that he wanted to steal it. Croy slashed open the belly of a reaver and was washed in hot blood. Of course Malden had stolen the one prize in all of Skrae worth having! “Malden!” he screamed.

Three men came at him, all at once, with axes and maces. They howled like wolves as they piled on to him, but Croy stabbed one through the stomach and bashed in the face of another with his pommel on the return swing. The third raised his mace to crush Croy’s skull, but before the blow could connect a knight on horseback came galloping through and cut the barbarian’s throat nearly to the spine.

In the breaking light of dawn, Croy looked up and saw Sir Hew come trotting back around to salute him. He forced himself to focus, to hear what his brother Ancient Blade had to say. “It’s going hard for the Free Men, but they’re holding their lines,” Hew said. “The Skilfingers are a wonder. Worth ten times what we paid. And still no berserkers have engaged us-do you think Morget’s holding them in reserve?”

Croy gasped for breath and wiped Ghostcutter on the fur of a fallen barbarian. He knew he should say something-give some order, perhaps, or ask for a more detailed report. He only resented the interruption, however. Free of enemies for a moment, his brain started to work again.

Images of Cythera cluttered his thoughts. Cythera, with Malden writhing atop her, strewn across a whore’s bed It was almost a welcome distraction when the wall of Ness collapsed.

The Burgrave came racing past them, his lance pointed up in the air. “Not my damned city, you don’t!” he cried, and behind him a hundred Free Men with bill hooks cried out as they rallied behind their leader.

Sir Hew stared toward Ness. “Sappers, would be my guess,” he said, sounding shocked. “If they can get inside the city-”

“We’ll have to besiege Ness ourselves,” Croy replied, nodding. That would be next to impossible, with winter growing colder and the snow piling deeper every day. They couldn’t feed the Skilfinger mercenaries for another week, not and besiege the city at the same time.

“Give me an order,” Hew demanded.

Croy shook his head. “Press the attack. Hurt them as much as we can before they get inside.” He thought he knew now why Morget had held his berserkers in reserve. Once those battle-mad warriors were inside the wall, no force inside the Free City could hold against them. They would slaughter the citizens of Ness indiscriminately, hacking and slashing until the streets were slick with blood.

Once that slaughter began, there would not be a single thing he-or the Burgrave, or Hew, or anyone else-could do to stop it.

When Ryewall collapsed, Malden was thrown from his feet. He was luckier than some of his archers, who were tossed off the wall altogether. Dust filled the sky and stones bounced off nearby rooftops, smashing chimney pots or shattering on the cobbles with great thuds. When the dust started to clear and Malden was able to stand again, he looked across a great gap in the wall, wide enough to march an army through.

Which was exactly what Morget had in mind. “For Mother Death!” the chieftain called, and six thousand gruff voices answered with a cheer that made Malden’s teeth rattle in his head. Below him the berserkers bit their shields and screamed and started running toward the gap, their axes flashing all around them, ready to kill without discernment. They made no attempt at formation as they came through the wall, stumbling over each other in their rage, their red-stained faces burning with blood.

Once they were inside, once they passed the wall, there would be no stopping the orgy of death they wreaked. Malden shouted for his archers to slaughter them, but the whores and thieves around him seemed too stunned to lift their bows.

Luckily, the dwarves kept their heads.

“She’s charged!” Balint called, and raced away from Slag’s engine, as if terrified that it was going to erupt in fire at any second.

The berserkers scrambled over the pile of rubble that was the sole remnant of Ryewall. They leapt and cried like birds of prey as they came.

With perfect calmness, Slag reached into his fire with a pair of tongs. He brought out a piece of wire glowing red hot. He fixed this to the serpent head of his brass staff.