Fifth moon, dawn, day forty-four of the siege
Slaughter district, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands
Hundreds were dead, hundreds more captured or fleeing in all directions, cut off from the rest of the group and the Rankers doing their damnedest to save them. The Mireces ambush had slammed into the side of the crowd like a wolf into deer, scattering some, panicking the rest. The defenders had cut down the wedge of enemy, and now Mace was in line with a hundred or so others, falling back step by step, fending off the next wave, conserving strength. Only killing when there was no other choice, too shitting tired for more.
The civilians who’d scattered raced down alleys and across plazas, lunging into cheap houses and low warehouses, pounding down smoky streets with more Mireces in pursuit, chased, cornered, beaten on to their knees and roped like cattle. A few made it into buildings without anyone noticing. Mace offered a swift prayer that they’d survive, somehow be safe when there was no one left in the city to protect them.
Once we’ve abandoned them.
Beyond the thousands of screaming, shoving, hysterical citizens yawned the North Gate and, beyond that, the harbour and the ships. Freedom. The heavy scent of old meat and stale blood rose from the warehouses nearby, clinging to nostrils and the backs of throats.
A score of massive, burly men and women emerged from the nearest abattoir armed with hooks and cleavers, flensing knives and heavy hatchets, carrying crates or stools as makeshift shields. They stepped up next to Mace’s men, a trickle of support while the boiling mass of humanity behind forced its way through the gate, squeezing, falling, trampling. Screaming.
Most of the butchers dwarfed most of the soldiers, and Mace found a tired smirk creasing his face as the Mireces hesitated at the sight of them. The timing was perfect.
From above came a volley of arrows, and then another and another. Dalli had unblocked the entrance to North Tower One and got archers on the allure. The Mireces scattered.
‘All right, lads, pause here. Give those behind some room,’ Mace panted. He knew the dangers of space opening between the line and the fleeing citizenry, knew too the worse danger of crowding already panicked men and women. Too many had died in Yew Cove under the feet of their brothers; Mace didn’t intend for the same to happen here.
‘They’ll be coming,’ a Personal Guard muttered next to him. ‘They want us alive for some evil purpose, so they’ll be coming. Can’t afford to let this many escape, arrows or not. There’s no getting out, not for us.’
‘That’s enough, soldier,’ Mace said quietly. ‘We all know they’ll be coming. Don’t go scaring your mates now. We have a duty here to protect these people; let’s see them safe, eh? And then concentrate on our own way out.’
The Personal grunted, but he dipped his head in acknowledgment and kept further opinions to himself.
‘Fall back,’ he heard and chanced a glance over his shoulder; the crowd had thinned, even calmed a little, and Mace drew in a breath to order the line to pull back when the Mireces howled out of the darkness again. They’d got shields – some Rank-made, most just bits of scavenged crate – and they threw them up as protection against the volley and piled into the line.
Fucking hundreds of them, hacking madly to split Mace’s line from the mass of non-combatants, peel them apart to scoop out the tender flesh of the unarmed, freshly screaming populace.
‘Hold!’ Mace roared, his voice breaking, his arm slow to counter, feet scuffing on the stone and tripping on the blood channels that ran down the edges of the road as he shuffled backwards. ‘Hold.’
But they weren’t holding. Not his soldiers, not the butchers or the slaughterhouse men. The assault was all out and overwhelming; whoever was leading these Mireces had pulled in every available body and, once again, they spent their lives like copper knights.
The Personal who’d foretold their deaths went to one knee next to him. When Mace extended his hand to pull the man up, an axe flashed through the air between them; Mace snatched away and the Personal was hacked in the chest plate, knocked on to his back, and dragged away out of the melee. Not dead, dear gods, not yet dead.
‘For Rilpor!’
The shout echoed through the slaughter district and Mace recognised the voice as his own. His men stiffened the line, echoing his cry and bringing the Mireces attack to a grinding, shuddering halt, men straining chest to chest, snarling and biting at each other, weapons locked or flailing.
‘For Koridam!’ Mace heard next and his eyes stung with tears at the honour they did his father even as he dropped the spear and pulled a knife, better for close quarters, and pumped it into a belly four, five, six times. The man fell and more rushed to take his place and Mace waited to be overwhelmed.
‘Mace!’ men roared all around him. ‘Mace! Mace! Mace!’ and the constriction in his throat wound tighter. He half flourished his knife in acknowledgment and then hacked it into a Mireces’ neck, wrenched it free and kicked the man over on to his back, hoping to trip the next to face him.
‘Front rank! Rotate!’ the order came and Mace stepped to his left and then back two paces without thinking about it, the movement instinctive after thousands of hours of drill, a score of battles. Not all of the front rank obeyed, and Mace had time to wonder who’d ordered the rotate when hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him backwards, and that’s when he understood.
For the second time in this siege, others were dying so he might live. While half of Mace’s front rank obeyed the order, the rest simply moved to the side to allow others to step up next to them in the line.
Mace glanced back, sick with fear and hope, and the gate was almost clear. Close enough. ‘Break for the gate,’ he yelled, throwing off the restraining hands and putting all he had into the command. ‘All ranks, to the gate, at the fucking double!’
He turned and pounded ahead of them, men clattering along. They fell in swathes, no longer attempting to delay the enemy, just to outrun them. For a second crystalline with hope, Mace thought they would make it.
And then the Mireces brought them to bay.
‘Dancer’s grace,’ they shouted and Mace saw dozens of his men tap their fingertips to their hearts. He copied the gesture as he slid through the gap, and just before the gate was hauled closed, with his men on the inside, he saw them turn their backs on the Mireces and pair up, Ranker against Ranker, and before the Mireces could disarm them, they drove their blades into each others’ chests and throats.
No souls for the Red Gods. No bodies for the Blessed One. Suicide over sacrifice.
And a sacrifice Mace would never forget. A gesture that broke him, as nothing else these long months had managed to do.
There were no words. He joined the others in piling barrels and rubbish and unstepped masts against the gate, and then they fled for the harbour, the ships, and the dubious safety of the river.
It was standing room only on the ships. Five men and women could stand in the space occupied by one prone casualty. If they couldn’t stand and no one was able to hold them up, they were left on the dock with empty prayers ringing hollow in their ears.
Their faces would haunt him until he died.
We’ve lost the last dregs of our humanity. We’ve reached the level of the Mireces themselves, as savage as our enemies, as uncaring of our fallen as those we sought to defeat. We’re monsters, every one of us.
The sun was lightening the sky and Mace stood at the stern of the rearmost ship and watched the black and orange and rubble of Rilporin fade with distance. His arm was wrapped tight around Dalli, and the short Wolf’s hands were hastily bandaged; she’d burnt them raw sliding down a rope from the northern wall in the last seconds before the Mireces cleared the gate and charged towards the dock and the departing ships.
The early sun blushed the eastern tower pink and turned the river into a ribbon of molten gold leading to safety.
Somewhere on deck, quietly at first but with slow-growing vigour, someone began to sing. Cracked and broken over the weeping and the weary creak of oars the voices rose until the song jumped from ship to ship and Mace’s heart was lifted, heavy and broken though it was, borne up on a shivering, delicate hope and a flickering ember of promise. Retribution, it breathed. Vengeance.
‘It shouldn’t be this way,’ Dalli whispered.
‘But it is,’ he murmured, ‘at least for now. But the next time I see that city, it’ll be over the corpses of our enemies. This isn’t over. Not by a long way.’
He stared at the city. ‘I swear it.’
The sun rose on a shattered landscape, on the graveyard of all they were, the pyre of all their hopes.
It shouldn’t be this way. And yet they sang.