S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

“Let’s be about it,” Rudi said.

Alleyne Loring nodded. “I’ll go for the emergency trip controls.”

The gates were usually opened by high-geared winches, and that took a modest number of hands but a fair amount of time. They could be opened or slammed shut much more quickly by a system of hydraulic cylinders and dropping weights, though resetting them was a long process.

Hordle jerked a thumb at a device of levers and springs two of his followers were carrying by the handles set into its square base, with a finned dart the length of a man’s forearm standing up from its center.

“I’ll get this to a parapet.” A beaming grin. “Won’t they be gobsmacked when it goes off from the gate’ouse!”

The dart contained a color-coded flare and a spring-deployed parachute; it would loft up several hundred feet and signal where they’d achieved a foothold. They’d expected to take a stretch of wall, drop climbing ropes, and hold long enough for storming parties to get through the killing ground and come up to reinforce them. This was much better. .

If it works, Rudi thought.

Aloud: “And I’ll go for the High Seeker, who’s their last hope of stopping us now.”

• • •

They found him twenty minutes later, on the crest of a high rampart, just as the dawn-light cleared the mountains to the east and spilled across the world in a tide of fresh wind and clarity. The flare floated in a speck of eye-hurting brightness, trailing smoke red and white as it sank towards the river.

“Back, back. . oh, God dammit !” Fred shouted as they pounded up the last flight of stairs and rounded the crouching shape of a turntable-mounted catapult.

A man sprawled dead over a pyramid-shaped pile of cast-steel round shot. Knots of combat sprawled over the top of the square tower, Boisean scutum and short sword against the long curved shetes of a few remaining easterners. That fight was ending quickly.

But two of his troopers had thrown their pilae and then rushed the man in the red robe, uncovered as the last of his followers fell. He flicked the weapons out of the air with two slapping motions of his hands. One of the Boiseans came in crouched, shield up and blade lunging in the economical gutting upstroke. The red-robe’s hand slapped down and bone broke in the man’s wrist with a crackle audible ten feet away. His shriek of unbelieving pain mingled with his partner’s bark of:

“USA! USA!”

The point of the gladius crunched into the High Seeker’s ribs. The skull-like shaven head pivoted to stare into the soldier’s eyes. For a moment the two stood immobile, and then the Boisean threw aside shield and blade and turned, screaming as he ran over the edge of the ramparts. The scream trailed away all the way down and cut off abruptly.

Bows snapped behind Rudi, and the High Seeker’s body staggered under the impacts of the longbow shafts. Some passed completely through him in double splashes of red; others hammered into bone. The red-robe flexed and recovered and advanced, grinning as strings of blood and spittle drooled down from his lips.

“No farther,” Rudi said quietly, advancing with the Sword of the Lady poised. “You end here.”

The man-or the thing that had once been a man-tittered. One soldier dropped his weapons and started hitting himself on the ears, trying to block the sound of it.

“Oh, hardly a beginning,”it wheezed. “Not this plan, bungled into wreck. . by fools. . only a beginning of eternity. .”

Behind him, someone was retching, and others clapped their hands to their ears and whimpered. The Sword of the Lady protected him, but he could feel that shielding flexing like steel armor under the pressure of heavy blows.

Finish it, he thought. Let the man who was at least die free of that.

“I. . see. . you. . forever,”the thing said, and turned and leapt from the parapet before his lunge could begin.

The sleeves of the red robe fluttered all the way to the earth beneath, where he sprawled to lie beside his victim with his brains leaking out of his burst skull.

There was a rumbling that made the stone quiver beneath his feet. The great steel gates were sliding into their grooves, opening the way. Below on the banks of the river barges were being shoved into the water and lashed together, and moments later the first century of troops marched across at the double-quick, shields overhead and to the sides to make a tortoise. A few catapult bolts flicked out from the walls to either side, but the assault party was fanning out on them, and the column was an endless stream with a standard at its head-a starry flag topped with a wreathed eagle.

Roaring, the soldiers of the Republic crashed through the gates and into their city.

• • •

Well, there’s a good deal to be said for Boisean discipline, Rudi thought at the end of the day.

He looked down at the hollow; the smell was fairly strong, with that many men crowded together. They glared back at him, some afraid, more defiant, most simply blankly impassive. He was in full plate now and mounted; Edain had insisted, and it was a useful touch as well. Gentler means would come later; right now he had to talk to them in the language they’d been taught to respect.

Several thousand of the Prophet’s riders had survived the day, though many of them had improvised bandages. The folk of the city had gone for them with a concentrated rage that meant torn to pieces was far more than a metaphor. Fred’s men had used the butts of their spears and their shield-bosses to protect those who surrendered, and they’d been ready to use the points too-which was why they hadn’t had to. The fact that they hated these men just as much as the civilians did hadn’t mattered a damn, nor the fact that some of the civilians were their own families. So far as he could tell, not one unit had lingered accidentally-on-purpose or gotten “lost” to arrive too late when a knot of easterners was in danger of being mobbed.

Old General Thurston built well, and Martin didn’t have enough time to wreck it. There’s a strength here in Boise that will strengthen us all.

“You men have served the enemies of humankind,” he said, pitching his voice to carry-a trick his mother had taught him. “But that’s mostly an accident of where you were born. Since you’ve asked for quarter, you will have it. You’ll be kept under guard until this war is over; you’ll have food enough, if no more-we’re short ourselves, thanks to your ravaging-and no more work than is needful to earn your keep. When the Prophet and all his works are gone, you can return to your families and your herds and your steadings and take up your lives, provided you give oath to live in peace. . and believe me when I say that I can tell a man false to his word, for I can. Or you can go elsewhere in Montival, to any community that will take you in.”

One of them shouted: “The Prophet will never fall! The Ascended Masters will bear him up!”

Rudi grinned, a hard expression though not cruel. “Then you’ll be in a prisoner-of-war camp a very long time,” he said.

A couple of the men’s neighbors nudged him; from the way he staggered and cursed booted feet had been in use as well. One snatched off his fur cap and beat him on the head with it by way of encouraging tact. Their captor suppressed a grin.

These are men too. It wasn’t their fault that they’ve been corrupted by the world’s enemy.

Then Rudi went on, bleakly: “Do as you’re told and you’ll be treated well. If you try to escape or fight or injure my folk further, my men will hunt you down like rabbits, and there will be no mercy then. For mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”