City of Masks (40 page)

“Your sash!” he said. “It’s gone.”

Salick looked at him, then out into the fields.

“It’s all the fashion now, I’m told,” she said. “Where are Marick and Dorict?”

“Salick, what are you doing?” Garet asked. Before she arrived, he had been looking at two dots that might have been the Blues returning, but now he couldn’t take his eyes from the young woman at his side.

“I’m doing what I must, just like you did! I want to be here with you, my Midlander fool, more than anything else. Don’t worry about the sash. Branet will probably let me wear it again, if your trap works!”

He took her hand, then they pulled each other into a quick embrace and kiss. There was a gust of whistles and calls from the defenders on the bridge, and the two flushed and separated.

“The trap will work, I hope. But I’m glad you are here. If . . .”

Salick put a finger on his lips. “Be quiet, my love. ‘If’ is always there, especially for Banes and King’s Agents. Look, isn’t that . . .”

The dots had resolved themselves into two running figures. They were not alone. A hundred yards behind, two low, quick demons followed.

“Racers,” Salick said. She raised her trident, and Garet unsheathed his sword. He strove to unknot the muscles of his shoulders for fear came before the beasts.

“Where’s your rope-hammer?” Salick asked. The running Banes were closer now, their legs pumping as the gap between them and the demons narrowed.

“No good in a crowd,” Garet said. He hefted his heavy, chopping sword. “This will have to do.”

The two waiting stepped aside to let Marick and Dorict pass between them. Salick took the first Racer on the tines of her trident, bracing her feet to stop the speeding demon in mid-charge. The force of it pushed her back several feet.

Garet did not try to stop his. He slashed along its side as it passed, and watched as it tumbled over and over to fall still at Dorict’s feet, nearly cut in half.

“A sharp sword,” Salick said. She kicked her kill off the trident’s points. “Well killed.”

“And yours,” Garet replied. “I wish a Basher’s hide was so thin.”

“Are you two going to kiss again?” Marick asked. He pressed a hand to a wet patch on his leg. “We saw you do it when we were running and nearly turned back.”

“Don’t worry,” Dorict said. He pointed towards the orchards beyond the fields. “There’s no time for such things now.”

THE TREES WERE
bending. Even at this distance they could hear the crack of branches. Beaked heads showed above peach and apple groves. Bashers and Catchers shouldered aside the tortured trunks. A narrow monster swayed above the tallest trees, swiveling its head this way and that before following the path of destruction towards the city.

“Is that tall beast a Stalker?” Dorict asked. His voice was strained, for the fear that came now was tremendous, even at such a distance.

“Yes,” Salick said. “Though I’ve only seen drawings before. You two go back to the bridge now. Garet and I will wait here and draw them in.”

Marick bristled, but Dorict dragged him away.

“You seem awfully sure of our courage,” Garet said. He worked to keep his breathing steady.

“In this clawed and changing world,” Salick said, “it’s the only thing I am sure of.”

“
WHAT ARE THEY
doing?” the King asked. He peered through the eye slits of the mask at the two Banes still standing beyond the bridge.

“They make sure the demons come to us,” his teacher said. “Claws! Are you always so stupid?” She was making small, sideways movements of her stone face.

Trax was doing the same. By force of will, he kept the spear points of fear on the other side of the mask, holding them just far enough away that he could move his hands on the hilt of his great sword.

“Always?” he said. “I don’t know. Vinir, what would you say?”

“This is the first time we’ve met, Your Majesty, but since we are all of us standing here waiting to meet fifty demons, I’d say you are no more foolish than the rest of us.”

She had taken a pike from the stack placed at the Wall end of the bridge. It had a comforting length to it. In her mind, she built her own wall against the fear.

Trax tried to laugh at her words, but it stuck in his throat. He covered his discomfort by nodding his head, relieved to still feel a ripple in the terror assaulting him.

It is outside
, he thought, and thought it again until he could force out a poor chuckle.

“Well said, Bane. It is an honour to fight beside you.”

Vinir smiled. “The honour is mine, Your Majesty.”

“I really do hate both of you,” the woman said.

THE SMALLER DEMONS
were breaking out of the orchards now: Shriekers running on all fours, a Squeezer using its long arms as levers to spring forward, Rat Demons skittering between the others or clinging to the larger demons.

There were plenty of those. Garet counted at least four Bashers and many others of equal size. They came, not as an army but a mob. A Catcher bowled over a Crawler in its eagerness to reach the two small figures standing within sight. Bull Demons and a Tunneler thundered behind it. The Stalker brought up the rear, wavering on its ridiculous stilt-legs.

“No Gliders,” Garet said. “Good. But we still have to keep the small ones from getting through the line, or the Masks will all be killed.”

“And so will we if we don’t move now!” Salick said, and grabbed his hand. The Shriekers were closing fast. She pulled him away and they ran back to the bridge.

The demons were almost at their heels when the first went down with a needle-tipped arrow in its chest. A cheer went up from one of the two towers, each with a masked archer, set between the bridge and the Walls. The second tripped over the first and died under the King’s sword.

Trax backed away, bloody blade held ready, until the three of them were behind the ranks of pikes.

“Shall we fire the ditches and the mouth of the trap?” he asked Garet, but the Bane shook his head.

“Not until all are inside. Patience, Your Majesty. Oh, and well killed.”

“Thank you,” said the King, though it came out as a squeak. The small woman pulled him back into the line, reaching up to smack the back of his head when he tried to turn and face her.

“Keep forward and don’t lower your sword,” she said. “The rest are coming now.”

“They’re almost in!” Bixa shouted. She sat on Maroster’s shoulders, one hand shading the eye slits of her mask.

Garet looked up to her, then to the archers’ towers. A Mask in the left-hand tower waved a red cloth.

“That’s it,” Garet said. “They’re all in now. It’s up to Tarix and Corix.”

THE DEMONS WERE
well within the embrace of the walls when Tarix yelled, “Fire the ditch!” Ratal ran out, dragging a lit torch along the brush dug into the ground between the ends of the Clawed Walls. He met another Gold, Cernot, in the centre and both ran back. In their wake, a new wall of oil- and wood-fueled fire barred the demons from retreat. Ratal dodged through the narrow gap left between flame and stone. He wiped soot from his eyes and picked up his iron staff.

“Do we attack now?” he asked, shouting over the roar and crackle of the fire. Behind him, Blues brought up piles of brush to feed to the blaze lest it die too soon.

Tarix shook her head. She stood on Kesla’s thigh to stick her head up over the wall. Between the knife blades, she saw the shambling monsters approach the bridge.

“Not yet. We need them all fighting the defenders on the bridge so that they’re concentrated and a rear attack will have the most effect. We daren’t split them up, lest they overwhelm us and break through these walls to get into the city. Patience, Ratal. The Banes and Masks on the bridge must hold the line for a while longer.”

Ratal frowned, but as soon as Tarix stepped down, Kesla hit him.

“Fool, don’t go running off and trying to be a hero. The beasts are still too spread out. That Stalker would scoop you up and bite off your empty head in a second.”

Tarix looked across the gap to where Corix and Taron waited as nervously as she.

“Soon,” she said, to herself, to Corix, to her husband on the bridge, and mostly to Heaven, if it was listening.

“
UNLESS YOU PLAN
to hide up there, get your clawed backside off my neck,” Maroster shouted.

Captain Bixa slipped down to the paving of the bridge. She adjusted the mask she wore and drew her longsword. Eyeing Maroster’s great, double-bladed axe and the length of his arms, she stepped back several paces. The big man stood at the front of the line, plugging a gap in the pikes.

The first true wave of demons smashed against the ranks of the defenders.

BRANET STARED THROUGH
the Gate and paled. He turned to the thirty Banes, mostly Greens and Golds who fretted under the terror seeping through the Outer Wall.

“Steady,” he said.

The outer ends of the Fourth, Third, and Fifth Wards had been evacuated. Black Shashes, under the command of Records Master Arict and several retired Banes, stood ready to lead the citizens of Shirath out into the wilderness and some distant city, should it come to that.

Branet prayed to Heaven that it would not come to that.

SALICK’S TRIDENT PINNED
a small Snake Demon as it tried to crawl beneath a defender’s legs. She pushed it back beyond the line, and Vinir’s pike chopped at its armored head. Stunned, the creature could do nothing as two more pikes jabbed down and pierced its throat and eye.

“Watch out!” Vinir cried, and Salick ducked as a Catcher’s long claws swept in to knock down the Mask fighting beside her. The claws caught her trident as they pulled back with the limp body of the woman in their grasp, ripping the shaft from her fingers.

She fumbled for her dropped weapon, vulnerable, but Garet dashed in to hamstring the beast with his sword. As the creature went down, Maroster hacked off one gangly arm, and Bixa cut its throat.

“Back up three steps!” the Captain shouted. They all retreated, and the monsters coming against them struggled as they crowded onto the bridge. Arrows fell in quick succession, killing smaller beasts and enraging the larger monsters. Garet saw the Tunneler fall sideways with an arrow through its tongue, crushing a Horned Demon’s leg. Maroster chopped down at the Tunneler, but froze as a small, wrinkled thing flashed by him. The rest of the Masks did the same, and one was immediately gutted by a Shrieker.

“Find that Rat Demon!” Garet shouted, dragging back the trembling King.

Banes tried to chase it, but it evaded them, twisting and turning up the bridge on its way to the city wall.

Garet knew if it got behind the archers, all their advantages would be lost.

Two small figures ran forward, stabbing downwards at the beast. It jumped this way and that, but so did its hunters. They seemed just as quick, and soon the one with the shield decapitated it with a well-timed slash. The other picked up the head and ran forward to throw it over the top of the defender’s line into the mass of demons beyond.

Maroster shook himself free of Relict’s grasp and roared back into the fray. Bixa and the King did the same, though with less enthusiasm.

“Corfin, Allifur! What are you doing out here?” Garet shouted, but the two had retreated to the end of the bridge and were bent over, looking between the defender’s legs for any more demons who dared creep beyond the line.

It was doubtful they even heard him, when every demon bellowed out its rage and every defender screamed back in defiance. Garet ran back to the battle, slashing at the reaching claws of a Basher and bracing the Masks and Banes who jabbed at it with their pikes. They forced it back, and the beasts crowding behind it, until they regained control of the bridge. A high-pitched shout of victory sounded in his ear, and he found Marick and Dorict beside him, adding their strength to his.

Garet grabbed them by the shoulders.

“Go now, and tell Tarix and Corix to attack. We won’t hold them if more get through and paralyze the Masks again!”

The two Blues nodded and ran back to the end of the bridge and down on each side into the dry wash below. They jumped the bundles of oil-soaked wood that waited for a final, fiery defense and looked at each other once before climbing up opposite sides to pass the word to the Banes hiding behind the trap’s walls.

The Tunneler recovered and resumed its brute passage towards the city. It kept its head low to shield its throat, the only weak spot in its frontal armor. Pike points slid off the flattened plates covering its head and shoulders and barely made a dent in the thick skin of its legs. Step by step it forced the defenders to retreat, until they were back at the city end of the bridge.

Again, a small Demon, this time a Crawler, breached the line. It climbed up on the armored shoulders of the Tunneler and launched itself over the Pikes to land behind them. Two Banes, a Red and a Gold, killed it with their flails, but were immediately set upon again. Garet pulled back as many Masks as he could, but the shifting line and the dead demon’s jewel left them paralyzed.