Fourth moon, dawn, day forty-one of the siege
Last Bastion, western wall, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
Tara led her squad along the allure from North Tower One towards the giant dust cloud occluding the western wall.
Last Bastion was standing, but slumped like a drunk, tilted down towards the haze over Second Last. Even as she watched, there was a whump, tiles fell from the roof, and then an orange glow began on the tower’s crooked catapult platform.
Shit. Something’s caught light in there, and the fire barrels are in the storeroom below. If that fire eats through the catapult platform and reaches those barrels, the whole tower’s going to go up like a Bel-fire. It’ll be carnage.
She sped up, no idea what she was going to do but determined to do it anyway. Her men pounded along behind her. Just another day in the glorious West Rank.
The dust was drifting on the breeze now, dancing and swirling in the killing field and around the tower like morning mist, brightening and then obscuring the flags of flame. ‘This is a bad idea,’ Tara gasped as she slammed open the tower door and began pelting up the stairs to the catapult level.
The smoke was drifting down the stairwell already, thick and stinging. Tara put her nose and mouth in the crook of her elbow and carried on. It was getting hotter. The catapult platform was the very top level of the tower, with moveable partitions that could open one wall in turn from which to loose. Three were closed and one of those was well alight as Tara stepped through the door and the heat slapped her in the face. A strong breeze blew in through the open wall, whipping at the flames and driving them ever higher. The platform was floored in wood to absorb impact from the catapult, and her best guess was that the wall collapse had knocked over the brazier used to light the fire barrels.
Fire barrels. Tara could see barrels in the far corner. Her heart leapt like a fish. They brought up the barrels from storage!
‘Douse those barrels now or we all die,’ Tara yelled over the crackle of flame. The men who’d followed her up each had a pail of water from the cistern at the base of the tower. Three threw their buckets, making about as much difference as a piss in a rainstorm, and as the soldier closest to her made to do the same she heaved on his arm.
‘No! There, throw it there. There, fucker,’ she yelled, pointing and coughing. He threw the water and doused a section of floor. It was just enough. Tara tapped her fingertips to her heart, held her breath and sprinted through that tiny avenue between walls of fire.
Crouching, scorching, her hair beginning to smoulder, she grabbed the boot she’d spotted and the foot it contained and began pulling back the way she’d come. Back through an ever-narrowing corridor of safety.
The fire roared across the gap ahead of her, cutting off her escape route. The air was empty of oxygen and searing her lungs, so Tara stopped breathing, stopped looking, took another grip on the leg and heaved again, but he was armoured, and he was heavy. Her knee hit the blackening wood and she felt the skin blister through her trousers. Wool wasn’t the best defence against fire, it seemed.
A noise and she turned her face up, eyes slitted against the fire, and caught a bucketful of sweet, cold water right in the face. Hands grabbed her, grabbed the body behind her, and dragged them clear.
Someone was slapping her repeatedly around the head, and she was about to punch them in the balls when she realised her hair was on fire. Another bucket was poured right over her head and shoulders: cold bliss.
Someone carried her clear of the fire, and they were halfway down the stairs to wall level when the barrels went up and took the whole fucking roof with it.
‘Protect the general,’ a voice yelled over the roaring, rumbling, crackling as the stairs shuddered and, she’d swear, tilted.
General? Tara smiled. ‘I’m a major.’
The man didn’t reply, stumbling sideways into the wall and bouncing her skull off it. He cursed, slipped down a step, yelled over a twisted ankle, nearly dropped her, and then ran heedless down the stairs as the rumbling from above increased. Tara tucked her head into his chest as her feet and ankles cracked into the wall with every turn.
They reached the allure leading to North One and the soldier threw her on to it, turned back into the stairwell, grabbed the body of the man she’d saved from those carrying him and slung him directly at Tara with a screamed ‘Catch!’
Tara was on her arse but she held out her arms on instinct and the figure slammed into them, his pauldron splitting open her chin he hit her so hard. They crashed on to the wallwalk and she just got her head up in time to see Last Bastion sway, cracks like veins jagging through the walls, and then the tower’s top level folded in on itself like a flower and it tumbled into the killing ground below. The soldiers, the burning catapult, and most of the corner wall went with it.
All movement ceased except for the swirl of smoke and dust and fire. The figure next to her groaned and raised a reddened, blistered face. Tara recognised Mace.
‘Why were you in there?’ she yelled, suddenly furious.
Mace watched her mouth moving with little comprehension. ‘Downstairs when the fire started. Men burning. Tried to …’ He gave up and coughed, great gobbets of black phlegm splatting on the stone beside Tara’s head. Black snot ran from his nose and he emitted a long, drawn-out groan as he slumped to one side.
The tower was still settling, blocks of stone bigger than her head bouncing and skating across the allure. ‘Time to move,’ Tara croaked and rolled on to her belly, struggled to her hands and knees, and paused to cough. Perhaps a score of soldiers had made it out on to the allure with them, in various states of smoking ruin, and they’d got the same idea, dragging themselves and each other towards the dubious and distant safety of North One.
‘Up you get, General,’ she said, though she couldn’t seem to get past hands and knees herself. ‘And make it quick. We’re not safe yet.’
‘Excellent,’ Mace groaned, and started to crawl. Most of his hair was gone, the side of his face red and blistered, burns running down his throat and disappearing under his dented, smoke-stained armour. Cords stood out in his neck as the pain began to register.
‘Gods alive,’ she muttered, stomach sinking into her feet. ‘How hurt are you?’
Mace coughed; he didn’t look at her. ‘I need to get across to the gatehouse and organise some sort of defence before those bastards start climbing the debris. Hallos can shout at me if I’m still alive by dusk.’ His voice was a strangled wheeze, as though he was being throttled, and something that looked like steam wisped up from inside his armour.
Tara smelt meat cooking and bile rose in her throat. ‘You should—’
‘We might all be dead in an hour,’ he interrupted, his voice jagged. ‘I’ll get treated later.’ He saw her expression. ‘I promise.’
When they were far enough from the splintered end of the allure, Tara forced herself to stand and dragged Mace’s unburnt arm to help him up. She hooked her shoulder under his arm and together they staggered towards North One, and eventually made their painful way down the steps and into First Circle.
The gatehouse seemed miles away. Tara coughed and coughed, the shakes setting in hard now, and then put her hands on her knees and threw up while Mace wobbled, unsupported. She decided not to do anything like that again ever. Her head was spinning, the ground heaving slowly like the swell on a lake.
‘All right, Major?’ Mace asked, and there was a strain in his voice she hadn’t heard before, not even after everything they’d been through in the last months. Pain.
She turned to look up at him, caught him unguarded with his jaw clenched so tight she could almost hear the enamel squeaking. She straightened. ‘Absolutely fine, sir,’ she said, suppressing another cough. ‘But you’re not. The gate to Second Circle and the hospital isn’t too far—’
‘Gatehouse. Now. The enemy isn’t shitting around with hospitals. Neither am I.’
‘The enemy wasn’t just cooked in his own armour,’ Tara snapped, but it set off another coughing fit and ruined her point somewhat. Mace joined her and hawked up some more black filth. But then he started moving again, and not towards the gate. Towards the killing field – or what was left of it with the wall’s shattered remains filling most of the space up to Second Circle’s wall.
Tara swore, spat, and then limped after him. Together they moved towards the gatehouse.
A runner was loping towards them. ‘South Gate breach,’ he gasped. ‘South Gate breach.’
‘Bloody bastard shits,’ Tara snarled. ‘Sir, there’re Rankers milling around down there. I’ll take a hundred of them, bolster the southern defence. The rest can help hold the breach. General, with your permission?’
Mace focused on her and then nodded. ‘Do it.’
Tara stepped close and dropped her voice. ‘Gatehouse then hospital. Sir.’ Mace waved her away and she knew he wouldn’t go, knew she couldn’t make him, either.
She forced her aching legs, her burning lungs, her pounding heart, into yet another run towards the soldiers staring in shock at the shattered wall, the broken defence. Beyond it, there were Mireces in the city.