Fourth moon, dawn, day forty-one of the siege
Double First, western wall, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
Yarrow was dead. Word had come along the allure, through the gatehouse and into Durdil’s ear, and he’d responded without thought, running back the way the messenger had come, roaring men out of his path.
‘Multiple assaults,’ Durdil muttered as he jinked and dodged around the soldiers on the wall. ‘Gods preserve us from multiple breaches.’ He was almost at Second Tower and shoving a soldier out of his path when the trebuchet’s next strike impacted and nearly shook him off his feet. He made a wild grab for the wall and clung on as the whole thing rocked.
‘Imagining things,’ he gasped and reeled across the allure to the guard wall, peered down into the killing field. A mess of rubble and a clear and horrifying bulge in the wall’s surface told him he was imagining nothing. The masts propping the wall had tumbled like kindling and masons were hard at work shoving them back into place, their shouts strident with alarm. Durdil was astonished they were still there, risking their lives.
The wall rumbled, shivered and then settled.
‘Full breach between Second Tower and Last Bastion,’ came the shout he’d been waiting for and Durdil turned away from the killing field and charged on, feeling as if he was running downhill, as if the wall had tilted …
He skidded again to a halt, stood still and stared at the wallwalk in the pink light of dawn, then turned and examined the other end. Then he lay flat on the stone and stared along it, ignoring the men hacking away at the ladders and the soldiers climbing them. It was crooked. The allure was definitely sloping. His gaze was snagged by a snaking crack up the guard wall.
This part of the wall’s supposed to be safe. The towers are supposed to … That tower’s leaning. Bugger me with a bargepole, the tower’s leaning!
Durdil sprinted for Second Tower and crashed inside. ‘Merle Stonemason,’ he roared, ‘Merle Stonemason, where are you?’ He grabbed Vaunt. ‘Where?’
Vaunt pointed. ‘Outside, sir, got cut off when we pulled back.’
‘How long?’
‘Just now.’
‘Come with me,’ he snapped. ‘We need that man alive.’
Vaunt pressed his lips together on whatever protest – whatever eminently sensible and perfectly justified refusal – he was about to utter. He hefted a shield and snatched up a spear, handed them to Durdil and took the same for himself.
Durdil strode to the opposite door. ‘On my mark. Three. Two. One.’ The door was wrenched free and Durdil lunged, slamming his shield out in front and jabbing with the spear. There was an arm’s length of space around Merle as the huge man swung Sweetie with economical force as though he was working stone. The hammer had already killed a dozen by the look of the corpses. But his face was purple with strain and his other arm was missing from the elbow and there was a lot – a lot – of blood pooling around his feet.
Vaunt and Durdil killed their way to him, and then a score of Palace Rankers flooded out around them, forming a shield wall against their brethren from the East. They retreated as a unit, a bristling hedgehog shambling backwards, men being picked off one by one until they reached the tower.
Four Easterners tried to follow them in and died on the threshold before Vaunt managed to slam the door and the rest piled barrels and tables against it.
‘Can you walk? Can you walk, man?’ Durdil shouted at Merle. The big ox gave a slow nod, Sweetie falling from his fingers and landing on Vaunt’s foot. Vaunt’s mouth opened in a silent howl of pain, but he handed Durdil a tourniquet without a word. Durdil tied it around the stump of Merle’s arm and led him to the stairs. ‘This tower’s leaning. Will it fall?’
‘Tower should be safe,’ Merle said, blood draining from his face as fast as his arm now. ‘Strong.’
‘It’s leaning,’ Durdil repeated.
Merle blinked owlishly. ‘See it from outside,’ he mumbled.
‘Shit. Right, Vaunt, hold this tower only until the collapse, then get the fuck out that way. Towards the gatehouse, not downstairs. That way. No one stays inside.’
‘Yes, sir. But you shouldn’t—’
Durdil grabbed him. ‘Stop those catapults,’ he hissed. ‘I told them to loose on the wall, to bring down just the weak section, but something’s not right. It might all go.’
He pushed Merle into the stairwell and they began the dizzying descent, Durdil going first and hoping the mason didn’t lose consciousness and crush him to death. The trebuchet sent another, possibly the final, stone into the wall and the entire tower lurched to the side. A crack appeared in the wall to his right and Durdil made a noise part horror, part defiance. ‘Don’t you fucking dare,’ he yelled, as though his words were mortar in the cracks.
Merle came to a halt and ran his hand over the fault, his brow furrowed. ‘’S not right.’
‘No it isn’t,’ Durdil said. ‘So let’s hurry.’
Durdil scurried on, dragging Merle by the sleeve, turn after turn, breath whistling in his throat and that damned tightness back in his chest worse than ever. A slight greying of his vision around the edges, his pulse outracing his feet. ‘No,’ he panted, ‘not now. Not … now.’
The sun had gilded the sky by the time they came out of Second Tower’s door and into the killing field. The other masons had fled. Durdil squinted against the brightness and dragged Merle thirty paces out from the wall, then turned the big man around and pointed.
There were more cracks down here, a lot more, all of them jagging out of the rebuilt section of wall. ‘Merle, look. I’m right, the towers are leaning. You said just the wall would go, not the towers. Are my men safe?’
Merle didn’t say anything. Instead he stood swaying, eyes unfocused, and then he folded up and slid on to his knees, his side, and then his back. He was paler than stone dust, and one look at him and Durdil knew he was dying.
He knelt down. ‘Merle, you’re going to listen to me and listen good. You’re a big bastard and I’m an old fuck, so you’re going to have to help me, all right? No way I can lift your flabby arse without help. So, count of three and you’re going to stand, and it’s going to hurt like the Red Gods are buggering you, but you’re going to do it because that’s the only way I can get you to hospital. Ready? One, two …’
‘Stop,’ Merle whispered. ‘Get up there, evacuate all the way to the gatehouse. Towers’re wilting like a poxed cock.’
There was yet another impact even as they sat there and a crack exploded in the wall in front of them with the sound of thunder splitting the sky. The wall rippled.
‘Fuck,’ Durdil squawked. He got his shoulder into Merle’s armpit and screamed him up to standing, the pair of them tottering towards Second Circle’s wall and the right-hand bend into the slaughter district. There was a gate there; they could get through to safety.
Merle made a sound like a cow giving birth and went to his knees again. The stump of his arm wasn’t bleeding much any more, but from the look of him it was because he didn’t have any blood left. ‘Come on,’ Durdil shouted at him, dragging frantically at his remaining arm. ‘Come on!’
‘Sorry.’ Merle toppled sideways and lay still, his visible eye fixed on the wall. They were a hundred paces from the corner. Durdil saw a flag waving frantically from Second Tower – cease fire. His brow wrinkled and then he looked right just as Last Bastion’s catapult released straight into the faltering wall.
‘Godsdamnit,’ he whispered.
The impact shattered the top of the wall, tossing East Rankers about like straw dolls. There were screams from high up, thin and distant, and a stream of defenders fled Second Tower for the gatehouse, staggering as the wall rocked beneath their feet.
‘Run!’ Durdil screamed at them, his fists clenched at his sides. The rumbling grew into a screaming stone beast and suddenly, with a plume of dust like a woman’s skirts, the wall between Second Tower and Last Bastion swayed, rocked some more, and began to slump.
Durdil looked up at the wave of stone breaking over his head. He puffed out his cheeks and barked a single, mirthless laugh, tapped his fingertips to his heart.
He didn’t run.