THE WAREHOUSES DOWN at the docks have been burning for days. They sleep on steps or on rooftops in the lulls, leaping over parapets to move on when the soldiers get closer.
She is hungry. She is thirsty. She wishes now she had jumped into the black arms of Tanith when she had the chance.
Above her the Byrsa is mostly in shadow. It is growing towards evening. She hears the tramp of hobnailed boots and peers into the narrow street below. She sees another building shimmer and tumble in a cloud of dust. The soldiers are clearing the tenements as they advance. They will not contest Carthage; they would rather pull it down, brick by brick.
They hold shields over their heads as they batter down the doors, prising away shutters with their swords and then scrambling into the dark interiors to dispute with angry skeletons who fight back with chair legs and kitchen knives.
Above them women and children hurl capstones and pans of boiling water.
The alley has been barricaded with ceiling joists and hunks of limestone. The soldiers scramble over them while an old man flings bricks from an upstairs window.
Catharo nudges her urgently. He points below. Two sappers have levered away the main doorframe. She feels the tremor through the roof. He grabs the piece of timber that has been their lifeline for two days and throws it over the alleyway to the next building and they scramble across. Moments later the tenement they had been hiding in comes down in a choking cloud of dust.
When it clears she sees more soldiers moving up the street through a mirage of heat. A catapult bolt deflects off the parapet in a shower of sparks. She screams and leaps back.
Below her an old man runs into the street on fire, screaming. Catharo pulls her away. He will not give up. He still says he will get her out of this, but she doesn’t see how.
Torches move along the black defiles of the city. Gajendra supposes that he should be used to the smell of death by now, but he isn’t. The thick smoke is making him nauseous. The elephants don’t like it much either. Colossus trumpets in protest. It’s as if they know what is happening here.
The streets are full of bodies; women, children, old men flushed out by the flames and the sappers, charred and crushed, some of them still moving or moaning. The street cleaners are dragging them out of the way of the cavalry with their hooked poles without bothering to check.
It is night but there are so many fires, the city is no darker than it might be at a particularly fiery sunset.
He sees two young boys crouching in the moon shadow; they have been cornered by four soldiers. They are laughing about it. One of the boys has a dagger out and the bigger one has taken shelter behind him.
Finally one of the soldiers decides it’s time to be about their business and draws his sword. He lazily chops at the boy’s head. What happens next is dazzling. The kid darts inside the blow and slices the man’s neck, taking the sword from his hand before he is even dead.
It is so quick the other three just stand there astonished, and while they are busy being surprised he has made after the one nearest him, slashing his hamstring and putting him down.
The other two rouse themselves. They have armour and he has none; they back him against the wall. Gajendra wills the bigger boy to grab a sword and help his companion, but he just stands against the wall, not moving.
This is no good, Gajendra thinks, and marches over. The boy is on the ground now, still parrying blows with the sword, but there is blood leaking out of him everywhere and strong as he is he looks beaten.
‘Stop!’ Gajendra shouts at them. One of the attackers turns, an ugly veteran, with a scar across his nose and sprays of fresh blood across his face. In his present mood it’s clear he would as happily put his sword in Gajendra as the boy on the ground. Neither of them are much pleased. One of their comrades is dead on the ground and the other is making mewing noises like a cat and clutching at his hams.
‘Who are you, dog breath?’
‘I’m the man with four bowmen behind him keeping him from harm. Who are you?’
Gajendra is hoping his archers are still there, but he cannot afford to turn and look for them. Judging by the looks on their faces someone or something is backing him up and has given them a scare. He hears the tinkling of a bell and smiles. It is Colossus.
‘Leave them, they’re my prisoners now.’
‘He killed our comrades!’
‘No, he killed one of them. The other one’s just keeled over now. When I tell Alexander he will not be pleased. Four of you against a boy and you couldn’t dispatch him? What are your names?’
They say something, a curse he supposes, and walk away.
He looks over his shoulder. Colossus has flared his ears in warning. Now the danger is passed he settles again.
Gajendra goes to the boy, who is still reaching for his sword even as he’s bleeding. He kicks the sword out of reach. He bends down and is astonished to discover that it is not a boy at all. It is a man, or a fiend of some kind; it is short, has a beard, a tattooed face and a nasty attitude. He slashes at Gajendra with his dagger and then passes out from loss of blood.
The taller boy is still cowering against the wall.
‘Well, you’re no hero.’
No answer.
‘You might have tried to help him.’
‘Is he going to be all right?’
‘I don’t know. Look what they’ve done to him and you did nothing to help. What was I supposed to do?’
‘At your age I’d killed my first tiger,’ he says to the bigger boy.
Gajendra stares. I have just saved this wretch’s life and here he is insulting me. I can see we are going to get along famously. His archers finally show up.
‘Do what you can for these two,’ he tells them. ‘They’re my new waterboys,’ and he walks away.