The collapsed bridges left a wide, dark ring around the centre of Ranan like a moat. It was a comparison the Captain of Refuge did not enjoy.
Once he and the others had secured the ruined end of the street, Heast ordered Lehana and Essa to his position. He pulled in Refuge and the Brotherhood so that they sat on the edge of the Saan defensive line. Both soldiers approached him with a question about the order – it bunched up their force, kept them closer to the concentration of siege fire and allowed the archers at the cathedral to have better luck with their pot shots – but as Lehana and Essa reached him, a collection of heavy rocks ricocheted off the roof and over the Saan position. Though the three of them could not see where they landed, they heard the stones hit other buildings and heard the cries of Leeran soldiers caught in it.
‘Miat Dvir didn’t organize that.’ Essa crouched in front of Heast, beside Lehana. The remains of a shattered wall ran beside him, revealing a street covered in broken stone, boulders and soldiers. Archers from Refuge and the Brotherhood lay spread out like a spray of stones to catch any Leeran who tried to come across. There hadn’t been any, however, since Kye Taaira tore through their main charge. ‘But it looks like he got his wish,’ the Captain of the Brotherhood continued. ‘He found the cursed he wanted in Yeflam and got them to help him.’
‘I don’t know if they’re helping,’ Heast said, ‘or leading.’
‘I hope they have a plan to cross over the divide, because if they don’t, we need one, and I don’t like the idea of running back for the first bridges.’ Lehana had a long scrape across her chest plate from a sword that had got too close. ‘But we can’t sit here. Those catapults will be readjusted to hit around the buildings soon enough.’
Sergeant Qiyala’s voice barked out, ‘Incoming!’ as a stone rose into the sky and came down long and loud a block away from where Heast and the others crouched.
The ruins of a building burst apart.
‘Well,’ Essa said. ‘Now you’ve done it.’
Lehana grimaced. ‘I hate siege weapons.’
‘The Faaishans have got to be reaching them. If not, it won’t matter if we’re here or over the other side at the cathedral. Those catapults’ll get us eventually.’
‘Leave it to me.’ Heast pushed himself up and made his way towards the far wall, where the injured had been placed. All things considered, the Captain of Refuge considered the push up to this point successful. He had lost thirty-three soldiers and had another half-dozen injured. Only one of them, Heast believed, would not return to this battle. The former First Queen’s Guard Jaela had been among the four soldiers caught in one of the catapult bombardments and while she had, miraculously, survived where her companions had not, debris from a building had struck her, broken her collarbone and sword arm, and smashed her head into the ground. She had been unconscious since.
‘Anemone.’ He interrupted the witch, who was bent over a soldier, mending a leg. ‘How’re you holding up?’
‘We’re doing okay.’ She lifted her bloody hands from the leg, revealing a jagged wound. ‘I can do nothing for Jaela here, but she’s the worst. Being unconscious is the best thing for her.’ She rose into a crouch and came near him. ‘My grandmother says you have a look as if you’re going to give me an order I won’t like.’
He grunted in acknowledgement. ‘Do you see the stone giant?’
‘I do—’
A shout went up through Refuge, a cry that there was a man out there, a man approaching the giant.
Heast moved to the broken wall. There, he could see the solid white man in loose and ragged clothes walking calmly to the still giant. As if awakened by the man’s presence, the stone began to move, the limbs of the giant grinding together with a sound both raw and horrific, as if parts of the earth had been given bones and muscle. It raised its face and, lit by the fires that burned throughout Ranan, Heast saw that the giant had no facial features. Its smooth head suggested not just a blindness, but rather an emptiness, as if it was nothing more than a construction made by the man who strode beneath its feet.
‘Incoming!’ Essa yelled. ‘Soldiers and siege!’
Heast turned to see Leeran soldiers clearing the broken buildings to his right. The first man, wearing tattered leather armour, dropped suddenly, a bolt in his head, but there were more behind him. ‘Essa, hold them back!’ The ground shuddered as the giant took its first step. ‘Lehana! Ready the lances! We go over once the bridge is made!’
A series of loud cracks and the sound of breaking earth followed Heast’s orders. The Leeran attack wasn’t huge – there was a bigger force surrounding the cathedral – but they were swarming over the rubble, unconcerned by arrow and bolt. Essa, shouting orders, had his spiked mace out, his soldiers falling in around him. Trusting in the man, Heast turned to the stone giant in time to watch both it and the man beneath it begin to fall as a dozen missiles of rock and boulder and pitch from catapults rained down. They hit the ground so hard that it split and began to give way into the darkness beneath Ranan.
Taking both the man and the giant with it.
He called out to Anemone, but she had already climbed over the broken wall she had been standing behind with him. Heast didn’t hesitate: he pushed himself up the uneven ground, his sword drawn, acting as a human shield for the witch. Within seconds, he was joined by Oya, Bliq, Fenna and Taaira, each of them carrying shields to link around Anemone as she exposed herself to the Leerans around the cathedral. Behind him, he heard sword and shield hit, heard Essa’s voice, but not his command. He heard Lehana as well, but Heast’s attention was on what was before him, on the breaking edge of the city, on darkness that had already swallowed the man and had latched onto part of the stone giant.
But before it did, flickering white light filled the cracks along its body. Heast was reminded of the ghosts he had seen in Mireea, of the white outlines of men and women he had known, and he thought that he had been wrong about the giant, that it had not been a simple creation to be moved, but had instead been a living creature. The light surged through the giant’s frame, but as more and more of it appeared through the giant’s broken body, it became clear to Heast that the light was not part of it, but rather holding it, ensuring that its fall was not stopped, but controlled. Beside him, he heard Oya swear, and when he turned from the giant, he saw Anemone with blood running from her hands.
The sound of splitting stone drew his attention back to the giant. He was just in time to see it topple across the empty expanse to the cathedral, the white light guiding it as it did, the old souls of the witches of Refuge ensuring that it came down to bridge the two parts of Ranan.
‘Refuge!’ Heast shouted. ‘Brotherhood!’ He pulled the horn from his belt and blew into it, long and hard. ‘We are crossing!’