THE TREES WERE bending. Even at this distance they could hear the crack of branches. Beaked heads showed above peach and apple groves. Bashers and Catchers shouldered aside the tortured trunks. A narrow monster swayed above the tallest trees, swiveling its head this way and that before following the path of destruction towards the city.
“Is that tall beast a Stalker?” Dorict asked. His voice was strained, for the fear that came now was tremendous, even at such a distance.
“Yes,” Salick said. “Though I’ve only seen drawings before. You two go back to the bridge now. Garet and I will wait here and draw them in.”
Marick bristled, but Dorict dragged him away.
“You seem awfully sure of our courage,” Garet said. He worked to keep his breathing steady.
“In this clawed and changing world,” Salick said, “it’s the only thing I am sure of.”
“WHAT ARE THEY doing?” the King asked. He peered through the eye slits of the mask at the two Banes still standing beyond the bridge.
“They make sure the demons come to us,” his teacher said. “Claws! Are you always so stupid?” She was making small, sideways movements of her stone face.
Trax was doing the same. By force of will, he kept the spear points of fear on the other side of the mask, holding them just far enough away that he could move his hands on the hilt of his great sword.
“Always?” he said. “I don’t know. Vinir, what would you say?”
“This is the first time we’ve met, Your Majesty, but since we are all of us standing here waiting to meet fifty demons, I’d say you are no more foolish than the rest of us.”
She had taken a pike from the stack placed at the Wall end of the bridge. It had a comforting length to it. In her mind, she built her own wall against the fear.
Trax tried to laugh at her words, but it stuck in his throat. He covered his discomfort by nodding his head, relieved to still feel a ripple in the terror assaulting him.
It is outside, he thought, and thought it again until he could force out a poor chuckle.
“Well said, Bane. It is an honour to fight beside you.”
Vinir smiled. “The honour is mine, Your Majesty.”
“I really do hate both of you,” the woman said.
THE SMALLER DEMONS were breaking out of the orchards now: Shriekers running on all fours, a Squeezer using its long arms as levers to spring forward, Rat Demons skittering between the others or clinging to the larger demons.
There were plenty of those. Garet counted at least four Bashers and many others of equal size. They came, not as an army but a mob. A Catcher bowled over a Crawler in its eagerness to reach the two small figures standing within sight. Bull Demons and a Tunneler thundered behind it. The Stalker brought up the rear, wavering on its ridiculous stilt-legs.
“No Gliders,” Garet said. “Good. But we still have to keep the small ones from getting through the line, or the Masks will all be killed.”
“And so will we if we don’t move now!” Salick said, and grabbed his hand. The Shriekers were closing fast. She pulled him away and they ran back to the bridge.
The demons were almost at their heels when the first went down with a needle-tipped arrow in its chest. A cheer went up from one of the two towers, each with a masked archer, set between the bridge and the Walls. The second tripped over the first and died under the King’s sword.
Trax backed away, bloody blade held ready, until the three of them were behind the ranks of pikes.
“Shall we fire the ditches and the mouth of the trap?” he asked Garet, but the Bane shook his head.
“Not until all are inside. Patience, Your Majesty. Oh, and well killed.”
“Thank you,” said the King, though it came out as a squeak. The small woman pulled him back into the line, reaching up to smack the back of his head when he tried to turn and face her.
“Keep forward and don’t lower your sword,” she said. “The rest are coming now.”
“They’re almost in!” Bixa shouted. She sat on Maroster’s shoulders, one hand shading the eye slits of her mask.
Garet looked up to her, then to the archers’ towers. A Mask in the left-hand tower waved a red cloth.
“That’s it,” Garet said. “They’re all in now. It’s up to Tarix and Corix.”
THE DEMONS WERE well within the embrace of the walls when Tarix yelled, “Fire the ditch!” Ratal ran out, dragging a lit torch along the brush dug into the ground between the ends of the Clawed Walls. He met another Gold, Cernot, in the centre and both ran back. In their wake, a new wall of oil- and wood-fueled fire barred the demons from retreat. Ratal dodged through the narrow gap left between flame and stone. He wiped soot from his eyes and picked up his iron staff.
“Do we attack now?” he asked, shouting over the roar and crackle of the fire. Behind him, Blues brought up piles of brush to feed to the blaze lest it die too soon.
Tarix shook her head. She stood on Kesla’s thigh to stick her head up over the wall. Between the knife blades, she saw the shambling monsters approach the bridge.
“Not yet. We need them all fighting the defenders on the bridge so that they’re concentrated and a rear attack will have the most effect. We daren’t split them up, lest they overwhelm us and break through these walls to get into the city. Patience, Ratal. The Banes and Masks on the bridge must hold the line for a while longer.”
Ratal frowned, but as soon as Tarix stepped down, Kesla hit him.
“Fool, don’t go running off and trying to be a hero. The beasts are still too spread out. That Stalker would scoop you up and bite off your empty head in a second.”
Tarix looked across the gap to where Corix and Taron waited as nervously as she.
“Soon,” she said, to herself, to Corix, to her husband on the bridge, and mostly to Heaven, if it was listening.
“UNLESS YOU PLAN to hide up there, get your clawed backside off my neck,” Maroster shouted.
Captain Bixa slipped down to the paving of the bridge. She adjusted the mask she wore and drew her longsword. Eyeing Maroster’s great, double-bladed axe and the length of his arms, she stepped back several paces. The big man stood at the front of the line, plugging a gap in the pikes.
The first true wave of demons smashed against the ranks of the defenders.
BRANET STARED THROUGH the Gate and paled. He turned to the thirty Banes, mostly Greens and Golds who fretted under the terror seeping through the Outer Wall.
“Steady,” he said.
The outer ends of the Fourth, Third, and Fifth Wards had been evacuated. Black Shashes, under the command of Records Master Arict and several retired Banes, stood ready to lead the citizens of Shirath out into the wilderness and some distant city, should it come to that.
Branet prayed to Heaven that it would not come to that.
SALICK’S TRIDENT PINNED a small Snake Demon as it tried to crawl beneath a defender’s legs. She pushed it back beyond the line, and Vinir’s pike chopped at its armored head. Stunned, the creature could do nothing as two more pikes jabbed down and pierced its throat and eye.
“Watch out!” Vinir cried, and Salick ducked as a Catcher’s long claws swept in to knock down the Mask fighting beside her. The claws caught her trident as they pulled back with the limp body of the woman in their grasp, ripping the shaft from her fingers.
She fumbled for her dropped weapon, vulnerable, but Garet dashed in to hamstring the beast with his sword. As the creature went down, Maroster hacked off one gangly arm, and Bixa cut its throat.
“Back up three steps!” the Captain shouted. They all retreated, and the monsters coming against them struggled as they crowded onto the bridge. Arrows fell in quick succession, killing smaller beasts and enraging the larger monsters. Garet saw the Tunneler fall sideways with an arrow through its tongue, crushing a Horned Demon’s leg. Maroster chopped down at the Tunneler, but froze as a small, wrinkled thing flashed by him. The rest of the Masks did the same, and one was immediately gutted by a Shrieker.
“Find that Rat Demon!” Garet shouted, dragging back the trembling King.
Banes tried to chase it, but it evaded them, twisting and turning up the bridge on its way to the city wall.
Garet knew if it got behind the archers, all their advantages would be lost.
Two small figures ran forward, stabbing downwards at the beast. It jumped this way and that, but so did its hunters. They seemed just as quick, and soon the one with the shield decapitated it with a well-timed slash. The other picked up the head and ran forward to throw it over the top of the defender’s line into the mass of demons beyond.
Maroster shook himself free of Relict’s grasp and roared back into the fray. Bixa and the King did the same, though with less enthusiasm.
“Corfin, Allifur! What are you doing out here?” Garet shouted, but the two had retreated to the end of the bridge and were bent over, looking between the defender’s legs for any more demons who dared creep beyond the line.
It was doubtful they even heard him, when every demon bellowed out its rage and every defender screamed back in defiance. Garet ran back to the battle, slashing at the reaching claws of a Basher and bracing the Masks and Banes who jabbed at it with their pikes. They forced it back, and the beasts crowding behind it, until they regained control of the bridge. A high-pitched shout of victory sounded in his ear, and he found Marick and Dorict beside him, adding their strength to his.
Garet grabbed them by the shoulders.
“Go now, and tell Tarix and Corix to attack. We won’t hold them if more get through and paralyze the Masks again!”
The two Blues nodded and ran back to the end of the bridge and down on each side into the dry wash below. They jumped the bundles of oil-soaked wood that waited for a final, fiery defense and looked at each other once before climbing up opposite sides to pass the word to the Banes hiding behind the trap’s walls.
The Tunneler recovered and resumed its brute passage towards the city. It kept its head low to shield its throat, the only weak spot in its frontal armor. Pike points slid off the flattened plates covering its head and shoulders and barely made a dent in the thick skin of its legs. Step by step it forced the defenders to retreat, until they were back at the city end of the bridge.
Again, a small Demon, this time a Crawler, breached the line. It climbed up on the armored shoulders of the Tunneler and launched itself over the Pikes to land behind them. Two Banes, a Red and a Gold, killed it with their flails, but were immediately set upon again. Garet pulled back as many Masks as he could, but the shifting line and the dead demon’s jewel left them paralyzed.
“Alifur, Corfin!” he shouted, without any hope of being heard. A man’s scream rose as the Stalker lifted him off the ground to rend him apart.
Garet waved his sword at the Blues waiting along the ditches. They threw down their torches and the bridge was engulfed in fire and smoke.
THE TWO YOUNG Black Sashes had seen the giant with the axe fall, and ran forward to find the demon responsible. It could not be seen in the mass of bodies and the broiling smoke that now surrounded the remaining defenders.
“Get up! Get up!” Corfin yelled in Maroster’s ear, but to no effect.
Alifur searched neareby, but the demon was hidden from them somewhere in the chaos. Giving up on that, they both tried turning Maroster’s head this way and that, but the man did nothing but moan.
“It’s no good,” Corfin shouted at Alifur. “These masks are only good for one way.”
Alifur examined the bodies lying around her. She pulled Corfin closer and said something that made his mouth drop open. He tried to protest, but then saw the look in her eyes. The boy dashed off between the legs of both defenders and demons. He returned quickly, a stone mask in his hand. It was flecked with blood.
Under Alifur’s directions, he tied it clumsily to the back of Maroster’s head, so that its curved frame overlapped with the first and all the strings were knotted together.
The big man shook himself and got groggily to his feet. He felt the new mask with his fingers and looked down at the two children. Corfin pointed to where his axe lay on the ground. Maroster picked it up, turned around in a complete circle, and gave a shout of joy. He ran at the Tunneler, bowling over smaller demons in the process. Reaching the armored monster, he swung from below, catching the creature under the beak and wounding it so badly that it reared, giving Vinir and Forlinect a chance to set their weapons in its throat.
Garet took a mask from a dead woman on the ground, looked at it, looked at the joyfully violent Maroster, and tied the stone face to the back of the King’s head. While he looked for more, the King raised his sword.
“Why didn’t we ever think of that?” His Majesty mused aloud, and stabbed a Basher in its side as it tried to run over Relict.
Garet fought on, trying to get the defenders back into a line that might hold. Even with the Tunneler down and many other demons killed, the beasts had scattered the Banes and the few remaining Masks.
Relict and Forlinect held the right side of the bridge deck barely a third of the way in. Maroster and Taron stood by them with a knot of ragged Golds and two Masks. The King and Garet held the left side near the same level, with the other Masks and three Reds. The middle of the bridge was now held only by the dead, and down it the Stalker Demon came, long-legged, into that gap, moving with a weaving single-mindedness towards the Gate.
“TOO MANY HAVE turned to fight us!” Ratal said. He fought side by side with Cernot, knocking down demons so the Old Torrick Gold could finish the stunned creatures with his pick.
“He’s right,” Corix said. She punched a Shrieker with her bladed gauntlets, knocking it under Tarix’s trident. “Our line’s too stretched. When the fire is done and we are dead, these beasts will get into the city!”
“Then we’ll adapt,” Tarix said. She stepped back to see the situation. Corix was right. Trying to stretch a line from the tip of one wall to the other left them vulnerable. There was a better way to deal with demons, and she knew what it was.
“Form teams of five and help each other!” Tarix yelled. Corix passed the order on to Ratal and the others.
Tarix noticed a Green puffing and wheezing beside her. The young woman fended off a Crawler with her spear and watched it scuttle away towards the bridge.
“Dalesta! I thought you were tending the fires,” Tarix said. She rested for a moment, leaning on her bloody trident. Kesla ran past, chasing down a Shrieker before it could get past Ratal.
“Sorry Master, but the wood is all gone now, so we came in to help.”
“There’s a Bane in you girl, and no mistake,” said Tarix. She put an arm around her shoulders. “Now, let’s finish off these beasts!”
Dalesta swallowed and lifted her spear. With Ratal and Kesla, they moved forward as a team, isolating and attacking demons as they went, and slowly driving them towards a bridge they prayed was still defended.
FINALLY FREED OF the need to face in one direction, the King fought with a certain abandon, sweeping his sword in circles that held off the attackers for at least the moment. He knocked aside one of the Stalker’s long hands, then backswiped a twisted beast he had no name for. The thing went tumbling head over heels, howling out its pain like a wolf.
The Stalker hooted and swept its arms left and right, knocking back the King on one side and Relict on the other. It took a step forward, then another, and then stopped. It lifted its beak to the sky, and with the grace of a falling tree, toppled backwards, laying itself out the entire length of the bridge. Through the smoke, all could see a clawed hand gripping the shaft of a massive arrow sticking out of its chest.
Garet looked to the archers’ towers but they were empty. He had not seen an archer for some time, but there was a sharp clank, and another arrow cut by him to take a Basher in the shoulder. The defenders cheered and pressed in, sealing the gap. Garet looked back to the walls. A wheeled box of great dimension sat before the Gates. Branet stood beside it, pointing and yelling.
Garet ran to the Hallmaster’s side. The box was made of silkstone held in a wooden frame, covered on all sides as far as he could see, with a slot pointing forwards. The whole thing sat on two iron wheels with a single support sticking out the back. As he drew near, another arrow flew through the opening and arched over the defenders. Now he knew what was in the box: the messenger machine Andarack had used to send the King’s letters into the Thirteenth and Twelfth Wards. And he guessed these arrows were now tipped with steel instead of words.
“Another miss, Andarack!” Branet growled. “Can’t you aim this fool thing?”
Lord Andarack’s voice came muffled from within the box. “Not well, and not without sticking my head up and freezing!” he yelled. “That’s why I need a Bane to guide me.”
“I’ll stay,” Garet said. “Hallmaster, we are holding, but the battle is still to be decided. I beg you to bring out your reserves, for without them, we may yet lose.”
Branet looked to where the defenders hacked against demons emerging from the smoke wreathing the bridge. As each appeared, it was set upon by a diminishing number of Banes and Masks.
“I will,” he said. “You try to make this thing work better!”
And with that, he turned and ran back to the Gates.
“Andarack!” Garet called, but the noise of battle garbled any reply.
“Back here, lad,” a rough voice called, and Garet ran to the rear of the box, where an extension of the top and sides of the silkstone panels gave some protection from the continuous broadcast of fear. Three Ward Guards huddled there. One of them was Gonnect, Andarack’s Captain of the Guard and an old ally of the Hall. His arm was still strapped to his chest, but he seemed otherwise hale.
“What are you doing here?” Garet shouted. Even with the protection of the silkstone, it couldn’t have been very comforting to be so close to all those demons.
Gonnect clapped his good hand on Garet’s shoulder. “Someone has to be back here to push this thing forward and adjust the sideways angle for firing. Here, open this hatch and you can talk to the happy couple.”
“Couple?” Garet asked, and pushed open the little door. He looked within the box to see Andarack on one side of the arrow thrower turning a crank to raise it, and Dasanat on the other side tending to a strange collection of spark tubes and wires.
“Can this thing move closer and be more accurate?” Garet asked.
Andarack looked at Dasanat, who nodded.
“Closer, yes. Accurate, no,” she said to both of them. “We can fire quickly but it is impossible to aim between shots. And we need a clear space to fire through.”
The arrow machined clunked as the last missile fired.
“And we need more arrows,” she added. “They are stacked within the Gate.”
One of the guards, a young man, swallowed and took off at a run, trying to keep the silkstone box between him and the demons. He almost made it, but faltered to tumble down and twitch on the ground.
Garet stood to go and help him, but had to cope with the sudden return of the fear as he left the protection of the box’s shadow. While he caught his breath, two small Banes ran past to grab the guard and drag him slowly into the Gate. After a moment, they returned, each carrying a bundle of arrows.
They dropped them on the ground at Garet’s feet.
“We’ll get some more,” Allifur said, and she and Corfin ran away. On the way to the Gate, they passed Branet and the remaining Golds and Greens coming towards the battle. The Hallmaster wielded an iron staff of prodigious proportions, and looked as if he could hardly wait to use it.
Gonnect wiped his brow. “I’m glad your little Banes helped my boy. He’s foolish, though brave.”
The young woman crouched beside him snorted. “No one’s as brave as you, Captain. Or as foolish!” she said, though her voice cracked partway through her jibe.
Gonnect laughed at that and said, “Since you’re my daughter, there’s a good chance you’ll outdo me in both measures. Now, let’s pass these arrows through the hatch.”
Garet looked to the gate and saw Corfin, then Allifur running back with even more bundes of long shafts in their arms.
“Drop them right here, and we’ll pass them through,” Gonnect’s daughter shouted at them.
Garet looked over the silkstone covering of the automatic bow. A desperate line of Masks and Banes fought off wave after wave of demon. Defenders and attackers were mixed in combat, allowing no easy shot. He swallowed. There was one trick, a desperate one that might work.
“Andarack, reload the weapon and wait for your chance to fire again, understand?” he said into the hatch.
Dasanat’s face appeared. “But we can’t fire effectively without a clear target,” she said, her voice no different than as if she were discussing the proper temperature of a forge.
“Leave that to me,” Garet said, “and congratulations again on your wedding!”
Dasanat actually blushed. “Married life is much more interesting than I thought it would be,” she said.
Garet grinned and ran to where Trax directed the remaining Masks, all of them doubly protected with masks of the fallen. A Shrieker lay at the King’s feet, and he stomped down on it with a booted foot until it stopped hooting.
“One step forward, please,” he shouted. “Pikes to the front! One more step. Drive them back!” he yelled, and thrust his great sword forward to bloody the snout of a Bull Demon. The creature swerved and gored Bixa’s shoulder.
Garet caught the falling Captain and yelled at the King, “Trax! We have to pull the middle of the line apart, and let them in!”
Trax shouted without turning, thought the mask tied on the back of his head made it seem he was speaking directly to Garet. “Are you mad? Without this line, they’ll get to the gate and inside the city!”
“Andarck’s machine needs room to fire,” Garet shouted in his ear. “Draw back left and right. They’re all on the bridge now, so none will get behind you. Look, the other Banes are joining you now.”
A glance showed Trax that the demons in the field were all dead. Corix and Tarix’s forces had chased down that last of them, and driven the rest onto the bridge. Now those Banes attacked the remaining beasts from the rear, and the raging fires below kept them from jumping over the stone railings and into the ditch to escape. At his back, Branet’s reserves swelled the ranks of the road’s defenders, yet people still died under the claws and teeth of their single-minded, bloody foes.
“Agreed,” he said, and swept the flat of his sword to hold back the defenders. “Captain! You take that half and line the road. I’ll take the other to this side. And watch out for arrows!”
Captain Bixa held her sword in one hand; her injured arm dangled by her side. She began to force her troops back. Garet saw Trax doing the same, and stood in the cleared space for a moment before he remembered the next part of the plan. When he did, he jumped to Trax’s side, waved his arms and yelled, “Now, Andarack! Let fly!”
The machine hummed, clanked, and spat out arrows again, faster than any archer could match and with far greater power. The Bull Demon went down, in the first two steps of its charge. Next fell the last of the Catchers with three arrows in its belly. A Snake Demon reared beside it, only to tumble again, and then more, each of them impaled by the machine’s arrows.
“WHAT ARE THEY doing?” Ratal shouted. “They’ve opened the line!”
He forced back a Squeezer Demon that had tripped Dalesta. Kesla whipped her flail down to smash in the side of the beast’s face.
The Gold signaled Ratal to crouch, and she climbed onto his back. From that height, she could see the opened line at the other end of the bridge, the demons going through it, and the first of the arrows firing into their midst.
“Everybody! Get down on the ground!” she screamed and dropped, sweeping out Ratal’s legs so that he lay beside her.
The other Banes dropped into the mud, soot, and blood at their feet while the demons died and the odd arrow missed its target to pass through the very place they had been standing a moment before.
Tarix spit out a mouthful of red grass. She turned her head to look at Corix, who lay beside her. “I’m going to have a word with Andarack when this is over,” she said.
Corix nodded. “You can have as many words as you want, and I’ll hold him down while you say them, but when you’re done, I want the plans to that demon-slaying machine!”
AFTER THE ARROWS had finished, and the machine had ceased its noise, Trax yelled, “Now, from both sides. Let none live!”
The trap closed. Branet held the centre of the line. Trax and Bixa came from the sides, and Tarix rose up with Banes of every coloured sash to strike from behind. Men and women still fell, for the creatures were as savage in defeat as they were in victory, but the demons were stopped, surrounded, and finally beaten. Salick and Vinir killed the last, a Digger that was desperately trying to tunnel its way through the rocks of the bridge so that it could attack them from below.
The wind shifted, and the smoke cleared from the bridge. Garet looked among the still standing, for he was too fearful to search among the fallen. He saw Vinir limping, one arm around a companion, a Bane without a sash. Salick raised her eyes and saw him. They stood looking at each other for a long while until Bixa, who had some sense of the importance of the moment, could restrain her groans no longer, and Garet had to help her to the carts brought for the wounded.
Trax stood over the body of a woman dressed in black and bearing the broken shaft of a pike. He looked up as Garet joined him.
“I still don’t know her name, but it seems I spoke the truth to her. It was by her lessons that I survived.”
A member of the King’s Guard, double-masked like the King, came and held out Trax’s sword. It was bloody to the hilts.
“Found it in a big beast’s belly,” the guard said. His knees wobbled with exhaustion.
Trax put a hand on his shoulder and took the blade from him. “It was kind of you to return it, Shorfor,” he said.
“It was kinder of you to put it there,” the guard replied. “That thing was trying to tear me apart!”
Trax knelt and straightened the purple sash that lay across the small woman’s body. He then placed his sword on the woman’s chest and folded her hands over it.
“Shorfor, when the demons’ jewels are removed and the priests come, please tell them that the sword must remain with her until they take her to the burning grounds, and if any relative should come to the funeral, the sword must go to them.”
“Why?” asked Garet. He looked at the King and saw tears creeping out from the bottom of the mask to wet his collar.
“Because I cannot leave her a mask in honour of her deeds. Those must stay with us for the city’s defense. I think she would agree with that. But I must praise her in some way, Garet, though she hate me even more from Heaven for doing it.”
They turned to watch Banes stumbling around the field and the bridge, chopping open the skulls of the fallen demons, removing their jewels and piling them upon the stones of the road.
“What will you do with them?” Trax asked and attempted to scratch at some itch hidden under the doubled mask.
“We’ll put them in that silkstone arrow-thrower for now,” Branet said. He had come up behind the pair while they talked.
“They should be taken north, to the depository in the hills,” the Hallmaster added, “but I fear to send any in that direction until we are sure no more demons wait there.”
And so the jewels were piled into the box, while Andarack, Dasanat, and their guards made do with huddling at the back of the machine until it was closed up and all the hatches sealed.
“Your trap worked,” Salick said to Garet. They walked together towards the Palace Plaza, behind the cart that bore an absurdly grinning Vinir. There was singing coming from the windows of the Fourth Ward. People did not yet dare come out into the streets, but their voices did.
“They think we’ve won,” Garet said.